scholarly journals An investigation of the effects of PICSA on smallholder farmers’ decision-making and livelihoods when implemented at large scale – The case of Northern Ghana

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Clarkson ◽  
Peter Dorward ◽  
Henny Osbahr ◽  
Francis Torgbor ◽  
Isaac Kankam-Boadu
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Northern Ghana

scholarly journals Analysing the determinants, constraints and opportunities of smallholder farmers access to input markets: evidence from northern Ghana

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-143
Author(s):  
Abdulai Adams
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Northern Ghana ◽  
Contract Farming ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Private Sector Participation ◽  
Input Source ◽  
Farmer Education ◽  
Input Markets ◽  
Significant Factors

Smallholder farmers face multiple constraints in accessing input markets. This study seeks to understand the dynamics that influence input markets in northern Ghana and the opportunities that exist for smallholder farmers to increase their productivity and welfare. Using a random sample of 448 households, the study applied the probit and non-parametric methods in identifying the factors that influence farmers’ access to input markets and the key constraints faced by them. The results show that access to extension services, access to finance, distance to the nearest input market, and input source are significant factors that would be likely to influence farmers’ access to input markets. Lack of finance, poor road network, and low prices of output are the main critically ranked constraints limiting farmers’ access to input markets. Policy initiatives should be geared toward strengthening extension service delivery, farmer education on inputs, improving feeder roads, and encouraging private sector participation in input markets. Available opportunities to leverage on and improve farmers’ access to input markets include the governments’ input subsidy programmes, existing large-scale agricultural projects, private agricultural companies with contract farming models, and extensive network of input dealers and aggregators in the communities. These findings are relevant for farmers, input dealers and policy makers working to improve farmers’ access to input markets.

scholarly journals Understanding the Implications of Alternative Bioenergy Crops to Support Smallholder Farmers in Brazil

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 2146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paola Sakai ◽  
Stavros Afionis ◽  
Nicola Favretto ◽  
Lindsay C. Stringer ◽  
Caroline Ward ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Sweet Potato ◽  
Water Use ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Calorific Value ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
Bioenergy Crops ◽  
Energy Needs ◽  
Development Context

Smallholders constitute more than three quarters of the world’s farmers, and despite their numbers, they commonly lack opportunities to advance their development status. Bioenergy production and consumption can help sustain smallholders’ energy needs and generate employment and income, but it also raises concerns over social justice and equity, especially where crops used for bioenergy could also be used for food. This perspective paper is grounded in a literature review related to three different crops in Brazil: sugarcane, landrace maize and sweet potato. It seeks to determine if these crops offer the potential to support smallholder farmers’ development in a more equitable way, focusing on opportunities for their use in bioenergy. We review the literature to identify policies shaping the smallholder development context in relation to these crops, assessing whose knowledge informs policy and institutional decision making, and highlighting the policy attention afforded to the different crops from different sectors. We further evaluate the literature on each crop in relation to water use and calorific value (i.e., food and energy). Our review indicates that while sugarcane has received the most policy and institutional attention, its development is largely anchored in research and development investments that support large-scale commercial farms and agri-businesses. Smallholders have not benefited or had the opportunity to engage in relevant policy decision making for sugarcane cultivation. At the same time, smallholders hold valuable untapped knowledge on the cultivation of sweet potato and landrace maize, both of which have the potential to generate development opportunities for smallholders. Our review suggests that the environmental impact of landrace maize and sweet potato in terms of water use is significantly lower than sugarcane, while they can generate more calories for energy or food consumption and offer diversification opportunities. Despite that these alternative crops offer considerable untapped potential to support rural development, more research is still needed to harness these benefits. Changes are needed to address inequities in policies, institutions and the types of knowledge informing decision making. Such changes need to afford smallholder farmers greater recognition and participation in decision making, so that the distribution of benefits from the three study crops can reach them to support their development better.

Intra-household decision-making and perceived climate change resilience among smallholder farmers in semi-arid northern Ghana

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Evans Batung ◽  
Kamaldeen Mohammed ◽  
Moses Mosonsieyiri Kansanga ◽  
Hanson Nyantakyi-Frimpong ◽  
Isaac Luginaah
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Northern Ghana ◽  
Household Decision ◽  
Household Decision Making ◽  
Semi Arid ◽  
Climate Change Resilience

Applications of blockchain in healthcare (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pranav C
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Review Paper ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Personal Identification ◽  
Healthcare Industry ◽  
Healthcare Organizations ◽  
Paper Briefly ◽  
Blockchain Technology ◽  
Audit Trails

UNSTRUCTURED The word blockchain elicits thoughts of cryptocurrency much of the time, which does disservice to this disruptive new technology. Agreed, bitcoin launched in 2011 was the first large scale implementation of blockchain technology. Also, Bitcoin’s success has triggered the establishment of nearly 1000 new cryptocurrencies. This again lead to the delusion that the only application of blockchain technology is for the creation of cryptocurrency. However, the blockchain technology is capable of a lot more than just cryptocurrency creation and may support such things as transactions that require personal identification, peer review, elections and other types of democratic decision-making and audit trails. Blockchain exists with real world implementations beyond cryptocurrencies and these solutions deliver powerful benefits to healthcare organizations, bankers, retailers and consumers among others. One of the areas where blockchain technology can be used effectively is healthcare industry. Proper application of this technology in healthcare will not only save billions of money but also will contribute to the growth in research. This review paper briefly defines blockchain and deals in detail the applications of blockchain in various areas particularly in healthcare industry.

Ban Ki-moon, 2007–2016

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Gowan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Central African Republic ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cautious Approach ◽  
Peacekeeping Operations ◽  
Council Decision ◽  
The Face

During Ban Ki-moon’s tenure, the Security Council was shaken by P5 divisions over Kosovo, Georgia, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine. Yet it also continued to mandate and sustain large-scale peacekeeping operations in Africa, placing major burdens on the UN Secretariat. The chapter will argue that Ban initially took a cautious approach to controversies with the Council, and earned a reputation for excessive passivity in the face of crisis and deference to the United States. The second half of the chapter suggests that Ban shifted to a more activist pressure as his tenure went on, pressing the Council to act in cases including Côte d’Ivoire, Libya, and Syria. The chapter will argue that Ban had only a marginal impact on Council decision-making, even though he made a creditable effort to speak truth to power over cases such as the Central African Republic (CAR), challenging Council members to live up to their responsibilities.

scholarly journals BattleNet: Capturing Advantageous Battlefield in RTS Games (Student Abstract)

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (10) ◽  
pp. 13849-13850
Author(s):  
Donghyeon Lee ◽  
Man-Je Kim ◽  
Chang Wook Ahn
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Outcome Predictor ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Rts Game

In a real-time strategy (RTS) game, StarCraft II, players need to know the consequences before making a decision in combat. We propose a combat outcome predictor which utilizes terrain information as well as squad information. For training the model, we generated a StarCraft II combat dataset by simulating diverse and large-scale combat situations. The overall accuracy of our model was 89.7%. Our predictor can be integrated into the artificial intelligence agent for RTS games as a short-term decision-making module.

scholarly journals Risk Assessment and Decision-Making Based on Mean-CVaR-Entropy for Flood Control Operation of Large Scale Reservoirs

Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 649 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quansen Wang ◽  
Jianzhong Zhou ◽  
Kangdi Huang ◽  
Ling Dai ◽  
Gang Zha ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Flood Control ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Yangtze River Basin ◽  
Mean Value ◽  
Operation System ◽  
Control Operation ◽  
Flood Control Operation ◽  
Reservoir Flood Control Operation

The risk inevitably exists in the process of flood control operation and decision-making of reservoir group, due to the hydrologic and hydraulic uncertain factors. In this study different stochastic simulation methods were applied to simulate these uncertainties in multi-reservoir flood control operation, and the risk caused by different uncertainties was evaluated from the mean value, extreme value and discrete degree of reservoir occupied storage capacity under uncertain conditions. In order to solve the conflict between risk assessment indexes and evaluate the comprehensive risk of different reservoirs in flood control operation schemes, the subjective weight and objective weight were used to construct the comprehensive risk assessment index, and the improved Mahalanobis distance TOPSIS method was used to select the optimal flood control operation scheme. The proposed method was applied to the flood control operation system in the mainstream and its tributaries of upper reaches of the Yangtze River basin, and 14 cascade reservoirs were selected as a case study. The results indicate that proposed method can evaluate the risk of multi-reservoir flood control operation from all perspectives and provide a new method for multi-criteria decision-making of reservoir flood control operation, and it breaks the limitation of the traditional risk analysis method which only evaluated by risk rate and cannot evaluate the risk of the multi-reservoir flood control operation system.

scholarly journals Precision Agriculture for Resource Use Efficiency in Smallholder Farming Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Systematic Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1158
Author(s):  
Cecilia M. Onyango ◽  
Justine M. Nyaga ◽  
Johanna Wetterlind ◽  
Mats Söderström ◽  
Kristin Piikki
Keyword(s):  
Resource Use ◽  
Precision Agriculture ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
English Language ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Smallholder Farming ◽  
Sub Saharan

Opportunities exist for adoption of precision agriculture technologies in all parts of the world. The form of precision agriculture may vary from region to region depending on technologies available, knowledge levels and mindsets. The current review examined research articles in the English language on precision agriculture practices for increased productivity among smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. A total of 7715 articles were retrieved and after screening 128 were reviewed. The results indicate that a number of precision agriculture technologies have been tested under SSA conditions and show promising results. The most promising precision agriculture technologies identified were the use of soil and plant sensors for nutrient and water management, as well as use of satellite imagery, GIS and crop-soil simulation models for site-specific management. These technologies have been shown to be crucial in attainment of appropriate management strategies in terms of efficiency and effectiveness of resource use in SSA. These technologies are important in supporting sustainable agricultural development. Most of these technologies are, however, at the experimental stage, with only South Africa having applied them mainly in large-scale commercial farms. It is concluded that increased precision in input and management practices among SSA smallholder farmers can significantly improve productivity even without extra use of inputs.

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