Climate Smart Agriculture? Assessing the Adaptation Implications in Zambia

We examine a set of potentially climate smart agricultural practices, including reduced tillage, crop rotation and legume intercropping, combined with the use of improved seeds and inorganic fertiliser, for their effects on maize yields in Zambia. We use panel data from the Rural Incomes and Livelihoods Surveys merged with a novel set of climatic variables based on geo‐referenced historical rainfall and temperature data to explore the changing effects of these practices with climatic conditions. We estimate the impacts on maize yields, and also on the exhibition of very low yields and yield shortfalls from average levels, as indicators of resilience, while controlling for household characteristics. We find that minimum soil disturbance and crop rotation have no significant impact on these yield outcomes, but that legume intercropping significantly increases yields and reduces the probability of low yields even under critical weather stress during the growing season. We also find that the average positive impacts of modern input use (seeds and fertilisers) are significantly conditioned by climatic variables. Timely access to fertiliser emerges as one of the most robust determinants of yields and their resilience. These results have policy implications for targeted interventions to improve the productivity and the resilience of smallholder agriculture in Zambia in the face of climate change.     

立辊式玉米收获机切割器的研究

通过对圆盘切割器进行的运动学分析和试验,并结合实际收割要求,得出双圆盘缺口切割器适合作为立辊式玉米收获机配套部件的结论。性能试验与田间作业考核表明:双圆盘缺口切割器满足玉米收获对切割器性能的要求,适应高速作业;并具有线速度低、功耗和振动小的优点。     

LDS-1H电脑水分测定仪测定玉米水分应用与分析

本文以LDS-1H型电脑水分测定仪为例,分析其测定玉米水分的准确度和影响因素,并提出了减小误差的建议,旨在找出一种能快速、方便、准确测定玉米水分的方法。     

The Ghana Grains Partnership

A surge in international food prices that began in 2008 led to a variety of responses from African governments, ranging from price controls, trade restrictions and food security stocks, to facilitating longer-term increase in supply-side increases in production. In Ghana, the objectives emphasized broad-based, pro-poor agricultural growth, expansion of high-value cash crops and improved production of food crops. A hybrid of crop rotation plus addition of external inputs of fertilizers in a modern intensified farming regime was seen as a way forward. The Ghana Grains Partnership (GGP) was underpinned by this assumption, addressing a national shortfall in maize through a coordinated and market-led value chain development approach. The Partnership was initially made up of international and national agribusinesses, an agricultural development fund, farmers and farmer associations and a commercial bank and coordinated by Prorustica. The GGP adopted innovative approaches such as the coordination of commercial and non-commercial objectives. The focus on complete agricultural value chains provided a holistic approach to meet the needs of farmers for agricultural inputs and finance and addressed constraints to more effective commodity output markets. The Partnership's basic principles included the setting up of a farmers' grain association with the partners sharing the costs, benefits and risks.     

Promoting smallholder seed enterprises: quality seed production of rice,maize, sorghum and millet in northern Cameroon

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) conducted two projects in Cameroon on strengthening rice, and sorghum, maize and millet seed production by smallholder seed enterprises (SSEs). Farmer groups (respectively, 25 SSEs and 114 SSEs) were formed or strengthened and trained. Sixty-six selected lead farmers were trained on the administering and managing of revolving funds. The groups were then linked to the Extension Service (for continuous technical advice), Agriculture Research for Development Institution (continuous supply of needed seed), National Seed Service (seed certification) and to financial institutions (financial support). The results obtained showed that 60 and 59.6 per cent, respectively, of the groups sustained their activities two to three years after the projects ended. Total certified rice seed produced increased to 800 tonnes (t) against 267t at the beginning. For the other cereal project, the total certified seed produced was 719.2t against 497t at its beginning. The use of quality seed rice together with good agronomic practices increased yields (up to 8.0t/ha against a scant 2t/ha before). All interviewed farmers stressed that the seed business was profitable and helped achieve higher living standards and diversify their activities. Seasonal incomes were more than US$1,783.31. Finally, both FAO projects helped generate farmers' income to about US$2,114.871, produced 447,954t of cereal grain and thus improved food security and alleviated poverty. The Cameroonian success could be repeated elsewhere.     

The Boys from Bothaville, or the Rise and Fall of King Maize: A South African Story

This paper tells the story, for the first time, of a maverick maize farmers' association in South Africa during the period of apartheid. NAMPO (National Maize Producers' Organization), that grew out of SAMPI (South African Maize Producers' Institute), ultimately achieved a unique, if short-lived, breach in the normal operations of 'organized agriculture': a set of relations and practices that bound together white farmers, the National Party and the state. The paper provides an account of SAMPI/NAMPO's project of 'King Maize' and an explanation of its fall after a brief period of victory from 1981 to 1985. This explanation draws on broader patterns of agrarian change in contemporary capitalism combined with the fracturing of the original agrarian bloc of apartheid in the 1980s, marking the end of a 'second moment' of South Africa's version of a Prussian path of capitalist development.     

标准助力,推动山西鲜食玉米产业发展——DB14/T867-2014《鲜食糯玉米果穗等级划分》解读

本文简述了山西鲜食糯玉米果穗等级划分标准的编制原则、主要内容、技术指标确定依据、验证方法等,旨在规范市场,保护农民、农村、加工企业和消费者的经济利益,体现优质优价,进一步做大做强糯玉米产业。     

我国玉米加工业技术效率的实证分析——以4个玉米主产省为例

文章运用数据包络分析法（DEA）对1998—2005年我国4个玉米主产省（吉林、辽宁、山东、河北）玉米加工业的技术效率及其分解进行了实证分析。结果表明,玉米加工业的综合技术效率是由纯技术效率和规模效率共同作用的结果;4个玉米主产省玉米加工业的平均技术效率水平较低,而且各子行业（淀粉及其制品业、饲料加工业、酒精制造业、白酒制造业）的技术效率值差距较大;但从1998—2005年技术效率的变化来看,玉米加工业的技术效率呈上升的趋势。     

筒式仓减少玉米入仓破碎的技术措施

分析了玉米破碎的原因,在筒式仓内设置缓冲装置,控制粮食下降速度是减少玉米籽粒在入仓破碎的最有效的措施,以及适用于筒式仓入粮降碎缓冲装置的结构及选用时的注意点。     

Agricultural technology adoption and child nutrition enhancement: improved maize varieties in rural Ethiopia

Adoption of improved crop varieties can lead to multiple benefits to farm households, including increased productivity, incomes, and food consumption. However, possible impacts of adoption on child nutrition outcomes are rarely explored in the literature. This article helps bridge this gap through an impact assessment of the adoption of improved maize varieties (IMVs) on child nutrition outcomes using a recent household survey from rural Ethiopia. The conceptual linkage between IMV adoption and child nutrition is first established using an agricultural household model. Instrumental variable estimation suggests the overall impacts of adoption on child height‐for‐age and weight‐for‐age z‐scores to be positive and significant. Quantile instrumental variable regressions further reveal that such impacts are largest among children with poorest nutrition outcomes. Finally, by combining a decomposition procedure with system of equations estimation, it is found that the increase in own‐produced maize consumption is the major channel through which IMV adoption affects child nutrition.