scholarly journals Rodent management and cereal production in Asia – balancing food security and conservation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grant R Singleton ◽  
Renee P. Lorica ◽  
Nyo Me Htwe ◽  
Alexander M. Stuart
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weksi Budiaji

This paper discusses the status of food security in Banten Province, Indonesia based on regional and city characteristics. Secondary data is used and is analyzed descriptively covering population dynamics, the population living in poverty, cereal production, disaster risk and soil types. Tangerang Region is found to have the largest population with the greatest number of people living in poverty among the regions and cities in Banten Province. Cereal production is dominated by the regions rather than the cities due to their vast area. Regarding arable land, flooding is the most threatening disaster in the major rice producing areas. In order to identify the distributions of regions and cities regarding food security, three indicator variables of food security dimensions are plotted, namely, cereal normative consumption, proportion of the population living in poverty, and proportion of malnourished babies. The three regions of Pandeglang Region, Lebak Region and Serang Region are grouped together in a less secure group.


Agriculture ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luxon Nhamo ◽  
Greenwell Mathcaya ◽  
Tafadzwanashe Mabhaudhi ◽  
Sibusiso Nhlengethwa ◽  
Charles Nhemachena ◽  
...  

The increasing frequency and intensity of droughts and floods, coupled with increasing temperatures and declining rainfall totals, are exacerbating existing vulnerabilities in southern Africa. Agriculture is the most affected sector as 95% of cultivated area is rainfed. This review addressed trends in moisture stress and the impacts on crop production, highlighting adaptation possible strategies to ensure food security in southern Africa. Notable changes in rainfall patterns and deficiencies in soil moisture are estimated and discussed, as well as the impact of rainfall variability on crop production and proposed adaptation strategies in agriculture. Climate moisture index (CMI) was used to assess aridity levels. Southern Africa is described as a climate hotspot due to increasing aridity, low adaptive capacity, underdevelopment and marginalisation. Although crop yields have been increasing due to increases in irrigated area and use of improved seed varieties, they have not been able to meet the food requirements of a growing population, compromising regional food security targets. Most countries in the region depend on international aid to supplement yield deficits. The recurrence of droughts caused by the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) continue devastating the region, affecting livelihoods, economies and the environment. An example is the 2015/16 ENSO drought that caused the region to call for international aid to feed about 40 million people. In spite of the water scarcity challenges, cereal production continues to increase steadily due to increased investment in irrigated agriculture and improved crop varieties. Given the current and future vulnerability of the agriculture sector in southern Africa, proactive adaptation interventions are important to help farming communities develop resilient systems to adapt to the changes and variability in climate and other stressors.


Author(s):  
Sayed Alim Samim ◽  
Zhiquan Hu ◽  
Wen Yu ◽  
Sayed Younus Amini ◽  
Moataz Eliw

Aims: Afghanistan is overwhelmed with food insecurity, thus severe food shortages in which a large percentage of the population lacks reliable access to food supplies. Cereals such as wheat, rice, and maize play a vital role in the country's food security due to their importance in terms of consumption and production quantity. This paper estimates cereal self-sufficiency and then makes a food balance forecast of the three major food crops - wheat, rice, and maize - cultivated in Afghanistan over six-decades (1979 – 2030). Methodology: Descriptive statistics, ARIMA model, and coarse metric technique were employed to analyze the data from the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), United States Department of Agriculture PSD Database (USDA), and United Nations World Population Division databases to determine cereal self-sufficiency and food balance forecast. Results Econometric analysis demonstrated that (1) Afghanistan is not yet self-sufficient in meeting grain consumption. (2) The production and consumption ratio declined from 0.9 to 0.55 from 1979 to 2030. (3) The gap of theoretical food imbalance will increase, and by the year 2030, cereal production will likely be sufficient for only 49.8 percentage of inhabitants, leaving a high shortage equivalent to the amount required by 24.4 million people. (4) Per capita cereal production will possibly decrease from 120.8 kg to 95.4 kg per person between 2018 and 2030. Conclusion: By evaluating the quantitative food balance and the growing population change, this study presents an analysis of the emerging threat to Afghanistan's food security. Therefore, we recommended that the Afghanistan government should increase the size of public agricultural expenditure, improve the level of agriculture infrastructure, increase the cultivation area of cereals, and continue to introduce policy to achieve higher yield.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (03) ◽  
pp. 14587-14601 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Gavin ◽  
◽  
Hussein Haji ◽  
Paul Porter ◽  
◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (18) ◽  
pp. 7585
Author(s):  
Dimitri Defrance ◽  
Benjamin Sultan ◽  
Mathieu Castets ◽  
Adjoua Moise Famien ◽  
Christian Baron

Food security is a crucial issue in the Sahel and could be endangered by climate change and demographic pressure during the 21st century. Higher temperatures and changes in rainfall induced by global warming are threatening rainfed agriculture in this region while the population is expected to increase approximately three-fold until 2050. Our study quantifies the impact of climate change on food security by combining climate modelling (16 models from CMIP5), crop yield (simulated by agronomic model, SARRA-O) and demographic evolution (provided by UN projection) under two future climatic scenarios. We simulate yield for the main crops in five countries in West Africa and estimate the population pressure on crop production to assess the number of available cereal production per capita. We found that, although uncertain, the African monsoon evolution leads to an increase of rainfall in Eastern Sahel and a decrease in Western Sahel under the RCP8.5 (Representative Concentration Pathway) scenario from IPCC, leading to the higher temperature increase by the end of the 21st century. With regard to the abundance of food for the inhabitants, all the scenarios in each country show that in 2050, local agricultural production will be below 50 kg per capita. This situation can have impact on crop import and regional migration.


GeoHazards ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 352-365
Author(s):  
Brigadier Libanda

Increasing extreme climate events and cyclonic activities provide clear evidence that the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region is a hotspot for climate change-driven natural disasters which critically disrupt agricultural production cycles. This is especially true with regard to the production of cereal, produce widely used to represent food security. Although studies have attempted to disentangle the effect of demand vis à vis projected population growth on cereal production across the region, the contradiction between cereal production and climate disaster preparedness remains poorly resolved. Therefore, literature on the subject matter is scanty. The present study is motivated by the need to overcome this paucity of literature and thus, deepen our understanding of cereal production and climate disaster preparedness in the region. Therefore, the main aim of this study is to assess public institutional support structures that are currently being employed for climate disaster preparedness in the cereal value chain across Zambia as perceived by small scale farmers. After a comprehensive assessment of focus group discussions (FGDs), several points emerge specifically highlighting four salient findings: first, results show that a government-led Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP) is the only strategy particularly targeted at disaster preparedness. All other initiatives are targeted at improving or safeguarding livelihoods with some components having a ripple effect on the cereal value chain. Second, results show that climate forecasts that are supposed to trigger early action are generally characterized by low prediction skill with more false alarms and misses than hits. Third, forecasts were found to lack geographical specificity with generalities over large areas being common thus, diminishing their usefulness at the local scale. Fourth, end-users found forecasts to usually contain technical jargon that is difficult to decipher especially that most small-scale farmers are illiterate. This study concludes that to fully support the cereal value chain and realize food security in Zambia, policy formulation that champion the establishment of an effective early warning and early action system (EWEAS) involving multiple interest groups and actors should be considered a matter of urgency.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-36
Author(s):  
Penda Sissoko ◽  
◽  
Gry Synnevag ◽  
Jens B. Aune ◽  

<abstract> <p>This study assessed the effects of introducing a technology package consisting of seed priming and microdosing of mineral fertilizer on sorghum and pearl millet yield, cereal production, net value of cereal production, household expenditure, adoption rate of technology and household food security in the millet and sorghum producing areas in Mopti, Segou and Koulikoro regions of Mali. Three different surveys were undertaken to collect the data during the period from 2013 to 2015. The first survey assessed the farmers practices (360 households), the second survey assessed production, household expenditure and food security in the households (54 households) and the third survey assessed the adoption rates of the technologies (108 households). The surplus cereal production was in average 1155 kg/household for adopting households while non-adopting households had a surplus of only 196 kg/household. The monetary surplus increased from 31.2 Euro for non-adopting households to 215.6 Euro for adopting households. Households using the package spent 167.8 Euro on health, children's education, and other necessities while non-adopting households spent only 29.5 Euro. Furthermore, households using the package spent 55.9 Euro on fertilizer against close to zero for non-adopting households. Finally, the number of food insecure months were significantly reduced from 3.57 months for the adopting households to 1.24 months for non-adopting households. The technology package initiated positive development pathways characterized by increased production and income, surplus grain production, investments in livelihood assets and yield-enhancing technologies and improved food security. This link from technology introduction to improved food security is very important from a development perspective, but there is a lack of research that clearly demonstrate this effect in the drylands of West Africa. Future interventions to ensure a more broad-based development should focus on continued investment in yield-enhancing technologies, diversification of production to ensure better access to high quality food, strengthening the role of women, and building institutions to support farmers' livelihood and agency.</p> </abstract>


Author(s):  
Fatima Abdullahi Shettima ◽  
Saheed Zakaree ◽  
Suleiman Sa’ad ◽  
Yakaka Abdulhlahi Shettima

This study aims to examine the impact of cereals production and cross-border trade on food security in Nigeria between 1986 and 2017. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) econometric technique was employed to analyze the time series secondary data sourced from World Bank Development Indicators, 2017 in order to explain the relationship between food security and the cereal production and cross-border trade. The findings of this study reveal that both in short-run and long-run estimation of error correction model (ECM), cereal domestic production, cereal exports and cereal imports have significant impact on the food security. Accordingly, cereal domestic production and cereal imports have a positive sign, which implies that an increase in cereal domestic production and cereal imports influence food security. While, cereal exports have a negative sign, which suggest that Nigeria as a nation is experiencing deficit in cereal production and therefore, the little quantity produced and exported posit a treat to food security. Based on the findings of this study, it is therefore recommended that policy formulation such as government subsidies in the agricultural sector and any other intervention programmes that will encourage an increase in domestic cereal production as well as policy formulation that will not totally discourage cereal importation should be implemented since its impact on food security is positive. This can be achieved through trade liberalization. On one hand, in as much as cereal export have significant impact on food security; government should be mindful that policy formulation on cereal exports should take into consideration the level of domestic cereal production and consequently its negative impact on food security.


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