Building an Accurate Chronology of Fremont Maize Horticulture in Northwestern Colorado

A chronology for late prehistoric Madagascar

The design and fabrication of a mini corn shelling machine aimed to address the challenges faced by small-scale farmers in the process of shelling corn. The machine was developed with the primary objectives of simplicity, cost-effectiveness, and efficiency. The design incorporates a hopper for corn input, a shelling unit consisting of rollers or blades, and a separation mechanism to extract the kernels from the cob. To ensure ease of operation and maintenance, the machine was designed to be portable and user-friendly. Fabrication utilized commonly available materials and standard manufacturing processes, resulting in a compact and durable Sheller. Performance testing demonstrated satisfactory efficiency in shelling corn, meeting the target for small-scale farming needs. The mini corn shelling machine presents a promising solution to enhance the productivity and reduce manual labor for small-scale corn farmers. Key Words: Design, automation, efficiency, corn shelling, agricultural machinery, prototype, scalability, sustainability.

Spatiotemporal dynamics of prehistoric human population growth: Radiocarbon ‘dates as data’ and population ecology models

We obtained over 200 archaeological wood specimens from the southeastern part of the Altai Mountains (Russia) to establish accurate calendar dates of the timbers using both radiocarbon and tree-ring analyses. Most timbers came from small and elite tombs of the Pazyryk culture (Siberian Scythians of the Iron Age period). Timbers from Hun-Sarmatian and Turk times (1st millennium AD) were studied for the first time. Three floating tree-ring width chronologies of larch (Larix sibirica) with lengths of 486 yr to 144 yr were developed from the tree-ring data. Tree rings of the composite 486-yr chronology of the Pazyryk culture represent the regional scale of Altai tree-ring width variability between about 720–240 BC. The composite chronology dates the earliest construction of Pazyryk culture tombs to ∼320 BC (ordinary tombs) and the latest ones at 240 BC (Pazyryk noble tomb #5). The composite chronology might be used for tree-ring dating wood from Scythian tombs in the region. It will also help confirm the precision of 14C dating of the Scythian tombs around the Hallstatt plateau of 14C calibration curves. We developed a 110-yr decadal 14C sequence from the Kurayka site that dates Kok-Pash culture timbers back to cal AD 240 (Hun-Sarmatian period). 14C dates of wooden poles from 3 sites of Turk stone enclosures suggested wood cutting dates between cal AD 470 and 830. The results demonstrate that crossdating tree rings along with 14C dating of crossdated rings provide the most reliable and highest precision dates for these archaeological sites.

At the lakeshore – An Early Nubian Complex site linked with lacustrine sediments (Eastern Desert, Egypt)

Africa’s eastern littoral borders the Indian Ocean, providing the setting for the settlements, people, and language known collectively as Swahili, which have been a key part of that ocean’s trading networks for at least two millennia. Graeco-Roman sailors visited the now-forgotten metropolis of Rhapta, and their voyages were recorded in the narratives that later became the first-century Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (Casson 1989). Traces of that early contact survive in the form of beads and coins, yet are limited in number and diffuse in nature (Chami and Msemwa 1997a; Horton 1990). From the seventh century onwards, a series of more permanent settlements began to monopolize this trade; by the eleventh century some of these had grown into towns that were able to control and provide a focus for the mercantile opportunities of the Indian Ocean. The trading economy of Swahili towns was based on the wealth of the African continent—gold and ivory were particularly valuable exports—and underlain by a mixed economy and diverse population of fishers and farmers, traders and craft-workers (Horton and Middleton 2000; Kusimba 2008). By the ‘golden age’ of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Swahili were an African society of considerable cosmopolitanism and fame, with towns like Kilwa Kisiwani known throughout the medieval world (Sutton 1993, 1997). Swahili archaeology is focused, conceptually and methodologically, on the series of stone towns that grew up along Africa’s eastern coast from the end of the first millennium AD. These towns developed as key nodes in both local and international networks of interaction, and became the conduits through which the African continent traded and communicated with the wider Indian Ocean world. The material settings of the towns, and particularly the distinctive tradition of coral architecture they contain, embody their cosmopolitanism, with this locally derived building tradition creating unique urban spaces that nevertheless reference the Islamic architecture of the Arabian Peninsula and Persian Gulf (Garlake 1966). Archaeology on this coast is still relatively new, dating back only to the 1950s and 1960s, and to the pioneering work of researchers convinced they had discovered evidence for Arab trading stations on the coast of eastern Africa (Kirkman 1964).

Agriculture is particularly vulnerable to climate change, as shifting seasonal patterns disrupt farming cycles and changing rainfall patterns, along with extreme weather events, present significant challenges. From the perspectives of risk perception and risk attitudes, this study elucidates the decision-making mechanisms underlying climate adaptation behaviors among maize growers in China, providing insights to inform climate adaptation policies, land management strategies, and food security protection. This study surveyed 752 maize growers in Jilin province, China, and employed factor analysis to quantify climate risk perception and risk attitudes. Using the Probit model and moderation analysis, this study examines the impact of climate risk perception on adaptive behavior and investigates the moderating effect of risk attitude on the relationship between risk perception and climate adaptation behavior. It then explores heterogeneity across production scales and generations. (1) We categorize adaptation behaviors into three types—capital-based, labor-based, and technology-based—according to the input factors involved. Climate risk perception promotes all three types of adaptation behaviors, whereas risk aversion primarily exerts a significant inhibitory effect on technology-based adaptations. (2) Risk attitudes exert a negative moderating effect on the relationship between climate risk perception and the adaptation behaviors of maize growers. Specifically, a higher propensity for risk aversion attenuates the positive influence of risk perception on labor-based and technology-based adaptation behaviors. (3) Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the moderating effect of risk attitude is more pronounced among small-scale farmers and younger generations. In contrast, it remains statistically insignificant for large-scale operators and older-generation cohorts. Therefore, it is important to enhance farmers’ awareness of climate risks by strengthening the dissemination of meteorological information and early warnings. Technical guidance should be intensified to improve maize growers’ understanding and mastery of relevant technologies. Develop targeted land-use strategies for climate change adaptation based on maize growers’ age, farm size, and geographic location.

Farmer fidelity in the Canary Islands revealed by ancient DNA from prehistoric seeds

The architectural connections between western Central Asia and China are not well understood. Recent investigations at the Haermodun site in central Xinjiang reveals new evidence of the influence of western Central Asia on the construction of fortifications in China during the early first millennium AD.

How much do rich countries influence the development path of the so-called Third World? Does this influence only flow in one direction? Perhaps the answer to such questions lies in thinking about the nature of economic intervention itself.Amy C. Offner argues that neither full-scale economic intervention nor laissez-faire can describe the development of capitalism in the twentieth century. She proposes “mixed economy” as a useful concept to describe the evolution of modern capitalism. This concept recognizes intervention in a market economy while keeping the forces of the market economy in charge of the bulk of production and simultaneously emphasizing the redistributive demands prevailing across marginalized groups. The mixed economy is a middle-ground arena between dirigisme and unregulated, unsupported private initiative that is best understood in historical context. Offner's book speaks about how the ideas and practices of the welfare and developmental states transform together and reinforce each other within the mixed economy. As she writes, “the developmental state incubated quite unexpected processes of intellectual transformation” (p. 8). One learns from this book about the actors and the nature of economic intervention rather than the endless—and somewhat useless—debate around whether an economy ought to be intervened in.As an attempt to create an arbitrary and incomplete taxonomy of the book's main arguments, one can think of three different waves of influence with regard to economic intervention: the New Deal, the influence of former New Dealers outside the United States, and the influence that the developmental states had back in the United States. The key element that binds together these waves, despite their important geographical and institutional characteristics, is the ongoing process of decentralization. Indeed, it is paradoxical that the developmental and welfare state's engine was bolstered by the creative promotion of autonomous spending and profit delegation to perform public tasks. This is the process that Offner's book sheds light on.Offner describes in detail the changing intellectual environment around the welfare and developmental state. In the aftermath of the Great Depression, the New Deal supported broad development programs in the United States, although the line separating recovery from development is blurry. Clearer, however, were the large-scale infrastructure projects that promoted growth, employment, and poverty eradication. This mindset changed after World War II, when the United States perceived itself as a wealthy country with pockets of poverty rather than as a country in need of development programs beyond welfare assistance.The post–World War II reorganization separated the world further into rich countries with poor and marginalized citizens and poor countries in need of development projects. It was in the latter where the New Dealers found new ground to experiment. Colombia emerges in the book as the most illustrative case of US foreign experimentation.Using an unparalleled wealth of primary evidence that includes (but is not limited to) the archives of Colombian business associations, regional corporations, and universities, Offner delivers new insights on US influence in the emerging developmental state of Colombia. Chapter 1, entitled “Decentralization in One Valley,” is perhaps the strongest chapter because it deals with the political influence of David Lilienthal, former chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority, in creating a regional autonomous corporation in charge of irrigation and extending support to large-scale capital-intensive agriculture. These large-scale development projects in the countryside are of the utmost importance on their own for a country with a political economy equilibrium protective of small-scale agriculture that has impeded true agro-industrial development in other parts of Colombia, including the coffee regions.Importantly, Offner's book is not about agriculture, nor is it a collage of development programs. It is a quest for understanding a country's development path. This is confirmed with her subsequent inquiry on urbanization in chapter 3, entitled “Private Homes and Economic Orders,” as workers displaced from agriculture pose to the reader (and the policymaker) a challenge. Is there any policy that should, or could, be implemented in urban areas to support the workers coming from the countryside? Offner's investigation sheds light on how ideas and policy interact while experimenting for answers—through original development projects—to this puzzle. The chapters on urban development in Colombia and the United States are perhaps the strongest illustration of the influence of untested theories initially deployed in experimental settings and constantly seeking broader legitimacy. One observes the arguments of Lauchlin Currie and Albert O. Hirschman constantly intertwined while navigating the challenges of political economy that surrounded the transition from the dictatorship of Gustavo Rojas Pinilla to the genesis of the National Front in Colombia.The argument that is perhaps the least clear is related to Colombia's own influence on US policy, beyond the fact that Latin America as a whole, rather than the particular experience of Colombia on its own merit, did sway public discourse and policy across the Western Hemisphere. Whereas Offner expands in detail on the actors involved in the political economy of the developmental state in Colombia, she also indicates that Puerto Rico's Operation Bootstrap was the critical flagship program that inspired in the United States new modes of intervention beyond welfare. Perhaps in the future similar archival work on Puerto Rico can help us to disentangle this question.

Purpose: Food security is one of the main goals for sustainable development having an important position in determining the government policies. The main objective of this study is to analyze the role of stakeholders in corn farming business efficiency by 1) analyzing the efficiency of small-scale corn farming in Grobogan Regency, Central Java and 2) analyzing the role of stakeholders in increasing food security. Design/methodology/approach: The study used a mixed method, a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis. The analytical tool used was Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), regression analysis, and stakeholder analysis with a focus on convergence and divergence among stakeholders. Findings: The calculation results show that as many as 18 (30%) corn farming has been efficient. The main stakeholders' role was found between the Agriculture office and farmers' associations.

The San Miguel Corporation (SMC) is a large agro-industry conglomerate in the Philippines, serving both domestic and export markets. This case study focuses primarily on a recently established hybrid corn seed operation in South Cotabato, on the island of Mindanao. By 1985, or soon thereafter, SMC projects that the seed company will supply roughly 50 percent of the domestic market. The seed company is comprised of a core farm of 1,250 acres, intended to supply all the raw material for a processing plant that dries, husks, shells, sizes, treats, and packages certified seed. There are no contract farmers in this system. In its broadest purpose, SMC expects to aid the nation and all corn farmers by providing the means to increase productivity by 100 to 400 percent or more. More specifically, the seed venture is conceived as a key element in a complex of closely integrated corporate businesses. For example, SMC operates large animal feed mills; these feeds use corn as the grain base. Increasingly in the years ahead, SMC plans to draw its corn supplies from farmers using company hybrids, which will not only simplify the marketing problem of the farmers,but is expected to lower grain costs, even as farmer income rises. In turn, lower feed prices will decrease the cost of meat, both enhancing the diet of more people and making SMC feeds more competitive in both domestic and external markets. Furthermore, SMC is a major grower of poultry, which again provides an internal corporate market for corn-based feed, also produced by SMC. Within this dynamic system of corporate growth, SMC recognizes that its relationships with the large numbers of small-scale corn farmers who buy their seed and sell their grain to the company is a key element. Therefore, the company's seed marketing program is geared to an expansive program: technical assistance, using a sales force of young men trained by SMC to double as agricultural agents; credit that may soon cover all inputs through harvest, at which time repayment will be made; and community development, which may go beyond the normal range of 144facilitating health, education, and recreation infrastructure to include intervention on behalf of a village with authorities the people have not yet learned to reach. The SMC outreach to its customers/suppliers appears to be very successful in Mindanao, and the corporation is already planning to diversify its services, for example, helping farmers diversify their cropping patterns to include other cash and subsistence crops. The entire program of investment and development assistance is fully supported by public policy; in 1981, the government stated its intent to spur the socioeconomic development of the entire country by harnessing the private sector's entrepreneurial skills and initiative.

Using electric corn threshers is a significant innovation in improving post-harvest efficiency for small-scale corn farmers. This tool increases efficiency and productivity, allowing farmers to process their crops faster and less laboriously. This article explores electric corn threshers' technical and economic aspects, including their design, operational performance, and impact on harvest efficiency and farmer productivity. The review highlights this technology's key benefits and challenges faced in its implementation and provides recommendations for further development to support more sustainable corn farming in the future. The use of electric small-scale corn threshers has helped corn farmers significantly improve their post-harvest efficiency. This article reviews the technical and economic aspects of small-scale electric corn threshers, including their design, operational performance, and their impact on harvest efficiency and farmers’ economic returns. The review also explores the key benefits gained from the use of these machines, the challenges faced in their implementation, and potential technological developments that can further support the corn farming sector in the future. With a comprehensive approach, this article provides a holistic view of the contribution of electric corn threshers to improving the operational efficiency and economic sustainability of farmers.

A mid-size combine harvester with 2.76 m reaping width and 103.53 hp engine output has been employed in grain corn production, especially by small-scale grain corn farmers. This study attempted to determine field performances of a typical mid-size combine harvester by measuring its effective field capacity (EFC), field efficiency (FE), fuel consumption (FC) and field machine index (FMI). Different types of energy inputs such as fuel, machinery, human, included direct, indirect, renewable and non-renewable energy involved in grain corn harvesting were also measured. The field measurements were carried out in 3 ha of grain corn farm, under similar field conditions using a typical mid-size combine harvester. The average values of EFC, FE, FC and FMI for the mid-size combine harvester were found to be 0.23 ha/h, 34.97%, 37.25 lit/ha and 0.91, respectively. The average equivalent energy values of fuel, machinery and human energy were 1780.70 MJ/ha, 587.73 MJ/ha and 8.53 MJ/ha, respectively. The average values of the direct and indirect energy were 1789.23 MJ/ha and 587.73 MJ/ha, respectively. The average values of renewable and non-renewable energy were recorded at 8.53 MJ/ha and 2368.42 MJ/ha, respectively. The mid-size combine harvester investigated in this study exhibited good field performance characteristic using a reasonable amount of energy consumption as compared to harvesting operation for other grain crops. From the results, it can be concluded that good practice in harvesting operation could improve field performance, and minimise operational costs and energy consumption.

Corn farming practices are affected by various challenges and opportunities in the environment, training, and the agricultural program of the locality. This study explored the farming practices of the small-scale corn farmers in Cebu by identifying their farming practices, challenges and opportunities, and possible improvements. Through phenomenological method, the key informants’ lived experiences show unconventional farming practices such as multiple sowing, unsystematic fertilizer application, indigenous pest control, and untimely harvesting. Farmers face political, logistical, environmental, and sociological challenges. However, it continues to thrive due to the farmers’ commitment and belief on the potential of the industry. Hence, they require sustained oversight from professional assistance to monitoring and support them and encourage younger generations to continue the corn farming tradition.