Small Land Size Research Articles

Spatiotemporal modeling of household's food insecurity levels in Ethiopia

The state of moderate and severe food insecurity in Ethiopia has not been significantly reduced for a long time due to cultural, natural, and manmade shocks, which cover most part of the country with considerable magnitude and have adverse effects on the health and economy. This temporal evolution of the wider geographic distribution of the food insecurity levels has not been investigated for the feeding culture and shocks effect in Ethiopia, though previous studies have indicated significant geographic distribution and related factors. In addition, the longtime zone-specific comprehensive drivers were not assessed. Therefore, this study focused on investigating the feeding culture-adjusted food insecurity levels (FCSL) and their evolutional sustainability across zones by identifying the factors causing each level of household's food insecurity tailored to a specific zone.In this study, Ethiopian socio-economic longitudinal data from years 2012, 2014, and 2016 with a sample size of 3835 households were analyzed. An ordinal spatiotemporal model with different interactions under empirical Bayes estimation was adopted, and the type III interaction with Markov random field was selected to reveal the evolution of FCSL sustainability across zones and find-out the causing factors of households to each level of food insecurity tailored to zone-level by analyzing the effects of diverse factors and shocks. The result reveals that a greater portion (52.07 %) of households’ population is moderately and chronically food insecure. Basically, households living in neighboring zones have significantly similar food insecurity levels, and slight improvements were observed over time. This transition over time within neighboring zones, revealed that chronic food insecurity in neighboring zones has transited to moderate food insecurity, particularly in most of the northern and southwestern areas of Ethiopia. However, the interaction term showed that the change in food insecurity levels for households living in neighboring zones is similar at one time point, but the evolution is not sustainable. Therefore, working on major zone-specific factors, such as enhancing zone-level urbanization through improving market and road linkage to rural areas, education, employment, non-agricultural businesses, and promoting integrated farming by conserving soil with consideration of additional confounding factors, will bring change and can sustainably eradicate moderate and chronic food insecurity in zone households through controlling dependency ratios, shocks, and small land size farming. This study brings resilient, manageable, and zone-specific mitigation for households living in food-insecure and vulnerable zones.

The spatial effects of the household's food insecurity levels in Ethiopia: by ordinal geo-additive model.

Food insecurity and vulnerability in Ethiopia are historical problems due to natural- and human-made disasters, which affect a wide range of areas at a higher magnitude with adverse effects on the overall health of households. In Ethiopia, the problem is wider with higher magnitude. Moreover, this geographical distribution of this challenge remains unexplored regarding the effects of cultures and shocks, despite previous case studies suggesting the effects of shocks and other factors. Hence, this study aims to assess the geographic distribution of corrected-food insecurity levels (FCSL) across zones and explore the comprehensive effects of diverse factors on each level of a household's food insecurity. This study analyzes three-term household-based panel data for years 2012, 2014, and 2016 with a total sample size of 11505 covering the all regional states of the country. An extended additive model, with empirical Bayes estimation by modeling both structured spatial effects using Markov random field or tensor product and unstructured effects using Gaussian, was adopted to assess the spatial distribution of FCSL across zones and to further explore the comprehensive effect of geographic, environmental, and socioeconomic factors on the locally adjusted measure. Despite a chronological decline, a substantial portion of Ethiopian households remains food insecure (25%) and vulnerable (27.08%). The Markov random field (MRF) model is the best fit based on GVC, revealing that 90.04% of the total variation is explained by the spatial effects. Most of the northern and south-western areas and south-east and north-west areas are hot spot zones of food insecurity and vulnerability in the country. Moreover, factors such as education, urbanization, having a job, fertilizer usage in cropping, sanitation, and farming livestock and crops have a significant influence on reducing a household's probability of being at higher food insecurity levels (insecurity and vulnerability), whereas shocks occurrence and small land size ownership have worsened it. Chronically food insecure zones showed a strong cluster in the northern and south-western areas of the country, even though higher levels of household food insecurity in Ethiopia have shown a declining trend over the years. Therefore, in these areas, interventions addressing spatial structure factors, particularly urbanization, education, early marriage control, and job creation, along with controlling conflict and drought effect by food aid and selected coping strategies, and performing integrated farming by conserving land and the environment of zones can help to reduce a household's probability of being at higher food insecurity levels.

Land suitability for irrigation of small reservoirs using spatial techniques in the upper regions of Ghana

AbstractRecent climatic variations have hindered the potential of irrigation in Sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA). This study presents a suitability analysis of irrigable areas for irrigation using spatial techniques. The focus of this paper was to examine regions that may be viable for irrigation for four small reservoirs constructed under the ‘One Village One Dam’ (1V1D) initiative. The thematic factors used were distance to water, soil type, soil depth, slope, pH, electrical conductivity, hydraulic conductivity, land use–land cover, organic carbon and organic matter. The land cover was classified using high‐resolution imagery from SAS Planet because of the small land size. The pairwise ranking found soil type to have an overall higher weight of approximately 15% and electrical conductivity to have the lowest weight. The highly suitable areas were found very close to the dam, and the permanently not suitable areas were located at the far end of the dam. From the area computation, it was found that the highly suitable regions in Kataa, Degri, Napaadi and Zansibulga were 10.52, 55.41, 1.01 and 3.77 ha, respectively. In conclusion, it was found that the majority of irrigable land was within the marginally to highly suitable class.

Integration of the agricultural sector and water use system of Kyrgyzstan in the context of global integration programs

The peculiarities of agricultural development and water use system in Kyrgyzstan and Central Asian countries are revealed. The main features of the land-saving type of development of the industry, characterized by low labor productivity, predominant production in the household sector, and small size of land are defined. The current system of water use, utilization and management of water resources was assessed. In the context of OBOR global integration programs, the directions of development of the agrarian belt, integration of the agrarian sector and water use system are substantiated. The main aspects of this integration are considered, including agricultural policy and support, introduction of innovative technologies for efficient water use in the agricultural sector and ensuring sustainable development of agriculture and water use system.

Awareness and Adoption of Climate Resilient Horticulture Technologies by Farmers in Ri Bhoi District of Meghalaya

A study was undertaken during the year 2020–2021 in Kyrdem and Sohriewblei villages, Ri-Bhoi district, Meghalaya, India to find out the level of awareness and adoption of climate resilient horticultural technologies. The selected villages had been adopted under National Initiative on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) project since 2011-2020. A sample size of 100 farmers (50 from each village) who were actively involved in horticultural activities was selected randomly. A well-structured, pre-tested interview schedule was employed for the data collection. The study revealed that the awareness level was recorded highest in institutional measures (94.2%) followed by horticultural practices (92.4%) and soil and water conservation (89%) measures. The highest adoption level of resilient practices was observed in horticultural practices (83.9%). Out of all respondents 89% were classified as medium category farmers for adoption of climate resilient technologies in both the villages. There was no statistical difference in the adoption level of resilient practices among the farmers of both the villages. Spearman rank correlation (0.730) depicted correlation between awareness and adoption level of horticultural technologies among the selected farmers in both the villages. It could be concluded that in an area like Meghalaya where small size of land holding and fragmented land emerged as main constraint for adoption of modern horticultural technology. Rigorous awareness programme to orient farming community towards scientific proven methods will be able to minimize the adverse effects of climate change.

Expert elicitations of smallholder agroforestry practices in Seychelles: A SWOT-AHP analysis

Agroforestry can leverage the co-benefits of climate change adaptation and mitigation while conserving biodiversity and restoring degraded and deforested lands. The preference of relevant stakeholders regarding agroforestry practices enhances sustainable land management through strategic decision-making in Seychelles and other island states. A suitable approach for assessing stakeholders’ preferences of agroforestry is the implementation of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) approach in combination with the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method. The entry point of this study is an extensive literature review process, during which 28 SWOT factors were identified. These SWOT factors were deliberated on during a half-day workshop with agricultural experts who agreed on 20 SWOT factors that reflect the local realities of the Seychelles through a consensus approach. Using the SWOT-AHP approach, focus group discussions were conducted to examine the perceptions of researchers and extension workers about the adoption of agroforestry in Seychelles. The results indicated that the positive aspects of smallholder agroforestry outweigh the negative aspects. For example, increased agricultural production, control runoff and soil erosion receive the highest scores among the strength factors perceived by researchers and extension workers, respectively. The willingness of international organizations to fund agroforestry-related projects and the existence of native tree species on farmlands have the highest scores among the opportunity factors. The lack of education, information, and communication between the government and farmers, and the small land size and crop competition have the highest scores among the weakness factors. Lastly, change in government policies on land use has the highest score among the threat factors by researchers, whereas the most significant threat is climate change and variability for the extension workers. The provision for a thirty-year land lease agreement in the National Agroforestry Policy of Seychelles is viewed by both groups as an incentive that could potentially drive the adoption and acceptability of agroforestry. Furthermore, better coordination of various efforts to promote agroforestry and more substantial extension services for farmers, especially the role of technologies for optimal production on small plots of land, can enhance climate resilience in Seychelles and other small island developing states.

Household food insecurity levels in Ethiopia: quantile regression approach.

Numerous natural and man-made factors have afflicted Ethiopia, and millions of people have experienced food insecurity. The current cut-points of the WFP food consumption score (FCS) have limitations in measuring the food insecurity level of different feeding patterns due to the diversified culture of the society. The aim of this study is to adapt the WFP food security score cut-points corrected for the different feeding cultures of the society using effect-driven quantile clustering. The 2012, 2014, and 2016 Ethiopian socio-economic household-based panel data set with a sample size of 3,835 households and 42 variables were used. Longitudinal quantile regression with fixed individual-specific location-shift intercept of the free distribution covariance structure was adopted to identify major indicators that can cluster and level quantiles of the FCS. Household food insecurity is reduced through time across the quintiles of food security score distribution, mainly in the upper quantiles. The leveling based on effect-driven quantile clustering brings 35.5 and 49 as the FCS cut-points corrected for cultural diversity. This corrected FCS brings wider interval for food insecure households with the same interval range for vulnerable households, where the WFP FCS cut-points under estimate it by 7 score. Education level, employment, fertilizer usage, farming type, agricultural package, infrastructure-related factors, and environmental factors are found to be the significant contributing factors to food security. On the other hand, the age of the head of the household, dependency ratio, shock, and no irrigation in households make significant contributions to food insecurity. Moreover, households living in rural areas and farming crops on small lands are comparatively vulnerable and food insecure. Measuring food insecurity in Ethiopia using the WFP FCS cut-off points underestimates households' food insecurity levels. Since the WFP FCS cut-points have universality and comparability limitations, there is a need for a universally accepted local threshold, corrected for local factors those resulted in different consumption patterns in the standardization of food security score. Accordingly, the quantile regression approach adjusts the WFP-FCS cut points by adjusting for local situations. Applying WFP cut-points will wrongly assign households on each level, so the proportion of households will be inflated for the security level and underestimated for the insecure level, and the influence of factors can also be wrongly recommended the food security score for the levels. The quantile clustering approach showed that cropping on a small land size would not bring about food security in Ethiopia. This favors the Ethiopian government initiative called integrated farming "ኩታ ገጠም እርሻ" which Ethiopia needs to develop and implement a system that fits and responds to this technology and infrastructure.

Extent of livelihood opportunity of the sericulture farmers in Kamrup district of Assam

The study was conducted with a sample of 120 sericulture farmers in Kamrup district of Assam in three development blocks viz. Bongaon, Boko and Chayani Borduwa. The study revealed that majority (43.33%) of the respondents belonged to middle age group, 36.67% were illiterate, 45.83% belonged to small size family and 69.17% had pucca house. In case of operational land holding majority (34.17%) of the respondents possessed small size of land holding, 33.95% had annual income ranging from Rs.75,001-1,00,000, 75.00% had medium level of extension contact, 61.67% had moderate level of risk bearing ability, 59.17% had moderate level of decision-making ability and only 23.33% had received training. Most of the respondents (35.00%) practiced “Sericulture +paddy+plantation crops” followed by “Sericulture+paddy+piggery" (15.83%) and “Sericulture+paddy+fruits” (12.50%) as their livelihood options. Education, family size, house type, operational land holding risk bearing ability and decision-making ability have significant relationship on livelihood options.

Aid, domestic and foreign direct investment in small states

Small States (SS) are economies whose population barely exceeds 1.5 million. Their small population size, small land size and location, mostly on coastal or Islands may act as a disadvantage to their rapid economic growth and makes them susceptible to the effects of external economic issues. Notwithstanding the disadvantages, some of them have enjoyed rapid growth over time and are classified as developed nations. This study examines the effect of aid, foreign direct investment (FDI) and domestic investment (DI) on economic growth in SS. Among SS, aid hurts the economic progress in underdeveloped countries. However, DI and FDI have a favourable impact on economic growth. In developed SS, aid, DI and FDI independently do not positively influence economic growth, however, aid with FDI, aid with trade openness and aid with domestic investment and FDI promoted growth. In the total sample (developed and developing SS), aid discourages economic growth, but FDI and DI enhance economic growth. Also, aid together with FDI positively affects economic growth. Policies should therefore be directed at moving from accepting ‘consumption aid’ to ‘productive aid’, increasing the amount of net FDI and increase in DI.

Ecological Conditions and Ecosystem Services of Artificial Wetlands in Semiarid Ethiopian Highlands

The main purpose of the study was to investigate the ecological status, ecosystem services (ESs) with their relative importance, and the local communities’ perception of the management of Washa and Borale artificial wetlands located in the Semiarid Ethiopian Highlands. The results revealed that many of the communities relied mainly on farming and livestock rearing with small land size (≤ 1 ha) and large family size. Grass harvesting, free grazing, farming, wetland conversion, and water extraction were the main anthropogenic factors causing the wetlands’ ecological disturbance. The ecological status of Washa and Borale wetlands were thus moderately (67) and highly degraded (80), respectively. Yet, the various ESs categorized as provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services, were still delivered from both sites. Vegetables (carrots, potatoes, garlic), crops (barley, beans), grass, water, and crafting materials were the products obtained from the wetlands. Some educational, research, and recreational services were also delivered mainly from the Washa site. Still, erosion, flooding, carbon regulation, and biota (plants, birds, fish) supporting services were provided at both sites. Yet, many of the ESs provided had low and medium importance due to the wetlands’ impairedness. Yet, the water and food delivered from the wetlands had high and even higher importance than the other services due to their being designed for providing water mainly for irrigation and livestock watering. Still, Washa provided higher cultural, regulating, and supporting services than the Borale’s owing to its being moderately impaired and lesser buffer and catchment area disturbance. Overall, many of the ESs delivered had low and medium importance because of the wetlands’ biodiversity loss, ecological degradation, and water reduction chiefly in the dry season. Yet, the people had good perceptions of the wetlands’ management. Hence, for the wetlands’ restoration, urgent action is required via developing a management plan.

LIVES IN DEBT AND DISTRESS: A CASE STUDY ON INDEBTEDNESS OF FARMERS IN THE DRY ZONE OF HARYANA STATE, INDIA

The study has been conducted to measure the extent and burden of debt on farmers. The study has been conducted to measure the extent and burden of debt on farmers. The study revealed that an average amount of debt per sampled farmer, per owned acre and per operated acre is rupees 491975, 70838 and 62775 respectively. The real burden of debt is very high. Institutional as well as non-institutional sources played main role in loan disbursement to farmers. One third amount of loan is still being taken for non-productive purposes. <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Conclusions:</span> Farmers are trapped under debt. They are not in situation to rid of from indebtedness. Because, small size of land holding by ownership, non-productive loans and high rate of interests charged by non-institutional sources are the main causes of their indebtedness.

Adoption Behaviour of Farmers towards Improved Cultivation Practices of Soybean in Dimapur District of Nagaland, India

Soybean is known as “golden bean”, “miracle crop” etc, because of its several uses, It is an excellent source of protein and oil. Soybean is considered an important crop because of its dual purpose that is oil seed as well as pulses crop. In Nagaland, soybean is cultivated almost in all the districts. The present study was carried out during the session 2021-22. The investigation was conducted in Kuhuboto block of Dimapur district of Nagaland. A total number of 120 respondents from 6 villages were selected using proportionate random sampling procedure.
 The study was conducted with the objectives to find out the characteristics of soybean growers, the extent of knowledge and ascertain the extent of adoption behavior of farmers towards improved cultivation practices of soybean and to delineate the constraints faced by the respondents and to obtain their suggestions. An interview schedule based on the study was prepared and data were collected and processed through primary and secondary tables and statistical analysis. The respondents were contacted personally and interviewed. The study revealed that majority of the soybean growers belonged to middle aged group, acquired Upper Primary school education, had medium level of annual income with small size of land holding. Majority of them had medium (10-20) years of farming experience, use of sources of information and medium level of extension contact. It was observed that the majority (70.84%) of the respondents had medium level of knowledge on improved cultivation practices of soybean followed by 13.33% having high and 15.83% having low knowledge level respectively. In respect of correlation analysis between knowledge level and the independent variables, it shows that annual income, land holding and extension contact had positive and found to be significant. Whereas, age, education, marital status, family type, family size, type of house, occupation, farming experience, mass media exposure and source of information was found to be non-significant. As for analysis between adoption level and the independent variables, it was revealed that variables like annual income, land holding and extension contact are significantly associated with adoption of soybean growers. Further, the variables age, education, marital status, type of family, family size, type of house, occupation, farming experience, mass media exposure and source of information was found to be non significant. The major constraints faced by the respondents were lack of proper resources and capital, high cost of inputs, lack of proper information at time, lack of consultancy, shortage of labors etc.

Farmers perception towards Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana

The study “Farmers perception towards Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana” was conducted in Chandur railway and Nandgaon (kh.) of Amravati district, 80 respondents (farmers) were purposively selected for this study. The data were collected by personal interview method with the help of structured interview schedule. The data were tabulated, analyzed and interpreted. The findings of the study revealed that the majority of farmers were having middle age group of 31 to 58 years, education upto Senior College, small size of land holding (1.01 to 2.00 ha.), low level annual income upto Rs. 400000 and low farming experience. However, the observation also found that most of the respondents were possessed low level extension contact, medium level social participation, medium level risk preference and high level sources of credit availability. The significant variables include extension contact and risk preference found the highly and significantly relationship with perception at level of probability 0.01. The variable viz., education, land holding, annual income, farming experience, social participation and credit availability has found non-significant relationship with perception at 0.05 level of probability. Age of respondents was negatively significant relationship with perception at 0.05 level of probability.

Evaluation of agricultural policies implemented with respect to less favoured area’s: evidence from Turkey

There have been many different agricultural support tools varying by countries. These agricultural support tools are determined according to different indicators such as the policies, expectations, regions, and economic levels of the countries and may differ from each other. One of these agricultural support tools is Less Favoured Area (LFAs) that has been applied for a long time. Turkey has many geographically different regions and many different agricultural support tools like those in the other counties However, considering the EU full membership process policies, a specified support tool for the LFAs, which are widely used in the EU, has not been implemented in Turkey. Mersin province is one of the areas where that is an issue and so was selected for this study. The province has a dual structure, with high mountains (Taurus) and wide plains. People in the mountainous areas make a living from animal production, especially goat breeding. The study framework was based on the logistic regression model, which was compared farmers' descriptive statistics and socio-economic features in villages in the mountainous/semi-mountainous areas and on the plains of Mersin province. Farmers’ intentions for land allocation and livestock and their migration tendencies were analysed in different scenarios. Age, experience, number of small ruminants, land size and credit usage were found to have a statistically significant effect on farmers’ decisions about continuing farming. Their decisions changed across the policy scenarios provided, and a policy that considers regional differences was found to be significant in their decisions. The paper shows agricultural support policies should consider regional differences to compensate for income losses due to physical conditions.

Wheat production in the highlands of Eastern Ethiopia: opportunities, challenges and coping strategies of rust diseases

ABSTRACT Ethiopia is the primary wheat producer in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) owing to the suitable agro-ecological conditions. Despite wheats economic potential for food security, the actual yield under smallholder farmers conditions is low due to various production constraints. Thus, the objectives of this study were to assess the present wheat production opportunities and constraints and identify farmer-preferred traits to guide variety design with stem rust-resistance and economic traits in eastern Ethiopia. Data on production constraints and trait preferences were collected using structured questionnaires involving 144 wheat-producing farmers. Wheat rust (reported by 97.3% of respondents), small land size (90.4%) and a lack of improved varieties (75.6%) were identified as the major constraints. About 41.7% of respondents in the West-Hararghe and 27.8% in the East-Hararghe zones did not use crop protection strategies to control rusts. Substantial respondent farmers used cultural practices (18.8%), rust-resistant cultivars (13.2%) or, a combination of these (10.4%) to control rust diseases. The essential farmer preferred traits in a wheat variety were rust resistance, high yield potential and good quality grain for bread making. Therefore, there is a need to breed new varieties with high grain yield and quality and durable rust resistance for sustainable wheat production in eastern Ethiopia.

Perception of Shifting Cultivation Practicing Farmers towards Soil and its Nutrient Loss in Zunheboto District of Nagaland

The present study was conducted in the Zunheboto district of Nagaland. Zunheboto is bordered by Mokokchung district in the east, Kohima district in the south and Wokha district in the west. Out of total twelve districts in Nagaland, Zunheboto district is selected for the study. Majority of the respondents were from middle age group, educated up to literate, middle caste group from the joint family, having large family size. Most of the respondents were from small size of land holding, having medium group of annual income, majority of the respondents were from medium social participation. The findings of the study indicated that majority of respondents had adequate knowledge regarding impacts on complete forest loss, impacts on diverse land use system, bad impact of burned land on health of people and burning practice negatively impacted the biochemical processes of soils. Correlation coefficient showed that variables viz.., annual income, Land holding, social participation, extension contact were positively and significantly related with perception of respondents towards shifting cultivation practices.

Analysis on the Disaster Prevention Strategy of Macau Urban Green Space

With the frequent occurrence of natural disasters in cities in recent years, the disaster prevention and mitigation function of urban green space has been attracting more attention from the public. Because the urban green space system not only has the function of improving environmental quality and maintaining ecological balance, but also has the function of disaster prevention and mitigation. Macau located in the coastal region of southern China suffers from natural disasters such as typhoons, rainstorms and floods. however, due to its small land size and dense population, the development of its green spaces for disaster prevention has been hampered. This paper analyzed the current situation of green space in Macau, summarized the main problems, and proposed corresponding design strategies to provide reference for the disaster prevention construction of urban green space in Macau.

Food insecurity related to agricultural practices and household characteristics in rural communities of northeast Madagascar.

Ending hunger and alleviating poverty are key goals for a sustainable future. Food security is a constant challenge for agrarian communities in low-income countries, especially in Madagascar. We investigated agricultural practices, household characteristics, and food security in northeast Madagascar. We tested whether agricultural practices, demographics, and socioeconomics in rural populations were related to food security. Over 70% of respondents reported times during the last three years during which food for the household was insufficient, and the most frequently reported cause was small land size (57%). The probability of food insecurity decreased with increasing vanilla yield, rice yield, and land size. There was an interaction effect between land size and household size; larger families with smaller land holdings had higher food insecurity, while larger families with larger land had lower food insecurity. Other socioeconomic and agricultural variables were not significantly related to food insecurity, including material wealth, education, crop diversity, and livestock ownership. Our results highlight the high levels of food insecurity in these communities and point to interventions that would alleviate food stress. In particular, because current crop and livestock diversity were low, agricultural diversification could improve outputs and mitigate food insecurity. Development of sustainable agricultural intensification, including improving rice and vanilla cultivation to raise yields on small land areas, would likely have positive impacts on food security and alleviating poverty. Increasing market access and off-farm income, as well as improving policies related to land tenure could also play valuable roles in mitigating challenges in food security.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12571-021-01179-3.

Business Viability of Small Combine Harvester in Haor Areas

Haor areas are the most vulnerable areas in Bangladesh. Rice is the major food crops grown in the hoar areas despite natural threats during the harvesting period. The appropriate size of the mechanical harvester is one of the solutions to mitigate the natural calamities and labor shortage in the hoar regions. This paper examines the technical and financial performance of a small combine harvester with the aim of determining its market viability in Bangladesh's hoar areas. Based on the field test and economic assessment, data on field power, forward speed, fuel consumption, time allocation in harvesting, hire fee, and payback period of machine were determined. The study showed that the operation by width was 10% less than the operation by longitudinal. Plot length and area of the plot should be more than 25m and 400 m2, respectively, to operate the small combine harvester at full capacity. Harvesting speed ranged from 0.63-0.90 km hr-1, and actual field capacity ranged from 0.03-0.05 ha hr-1. Fuel consumption ranged from 25-32 L ha-1 due to slow cutting speed. The plant density was observed higher due to cultivating high yielding variety. The machine should be operated at a low speed, preferably walking speed, to avoid clogging in the conveying chain. The combine harvester has used 56% of the harvest time, and a remaining 44% for turning purposes and other inevitable uses. The small combine harvester recorded 1.12-1.40% loss of grain. However, grain damaged was not observed during harvesting. The small combine harvester becomes profitable for the investment cost of Tk 3,50,000 with a hiring rate of Tk 10,000 Tk ha-1 following 15 ha of harvesting area in a harvest capability of 0.04 ha hr-1. This machine is suitable for a small size of land where larger sizes of machines are inaccessible. This would offer small entrepreneur different choices of paddy harvesting mechanization to encourage future adoption of enhanced innovations.

Enhancing food security through home gardening in urbanizing environment in Machakos County, Kenya

Kenya is rapidly urbanizing at an annual rate of about 4.3%. One of the consequences of urbanization has been the problem of food insecurity in peri-urban areas. Increased migration to urban from rural areas has enhanced food insecurity in these areas. The peri-urban area of Kangundo-Tala in Machakos County is one of the fastest-growing peri-urban areas due to its proximity to the capital city of Nairobi. This study investigated the impact of home gardening in enhancing food security in the rapidly urbanizing middle-income Kangundo–Tala peri-urban areas of Machakos County, Kenya. The specific objectives of the study were: to identify the causes of households’ food insecurity in the study area; to examine the factors influencing the adoption of home gardening and; to establish the role of home gardening as a measure of households’ food security. To measure food security, three consumption behaviors were analyzed: consumption changes, food expenditure reduction and income expansion. A qualitative approach was adopted where a total of 120 newly settled households were interviewed. The three main causes of food insecurity were identified (i) small land sizes, (ii) low and erratic rainfall and, (iii) the socialization of peri-urban dwellers. About 68% of the households were practicing at least one form of home gardening. The need for safe and nutritious food, seasonal unavailability, and inaccessibility of food encouraged the establishment of home gardens. From the gardens, households were able to diversify their diets, access safe food and have food readily available. With enhanced stability in food availability, accessibility, and utilization, the study concluded that home gardens played a major role in enhancing food. However, the production was at a very small scale. Up-scaling of home gardening by the Ministry of Agriculture through training was recommended.