Characterization of Small-Scale Farmers and Assessment of Their Access to Crop Production Information in Selected Counties of Kenya

Small-scale farming accounts for 78% of total agricultural production in Kenya and contributes to 23.5% of the country’s GDP. Their crop production activities are mostly rainfed subsistence with any surplus being sold to bring in some income. Timely decisions on farm practices such as farm preparation and planting are critical determinants of the seasonal outcomes. In Kenya, most small-scale farmers have no reliable source of information that would help them make timely and accurate decisions. County governments have extension officers who are mandated with giving farmers advisory services to farmers but they are not able to reach most farmers due to facilitation constraints. The mode and format of sharing information is also critical since it’s important to ensure that it’s timely, well-understood and usable. This study sought to assess access to geospatial derived and other crop production information by farmers in four selected counties of Kenya. Specific objectives were to determine the profile of small-scale farmers in terms of age, education and farm size;to determine the type of information that is made available to them by County and Sub-County extension officers including the format and mode of provision;and to determine if the information provided was useful in terms of accuracy, timeliness and adequacy. The results indicated that over 80% of the farmers were over 35 years of age and over 56% were male. Majority had attained primary education (34%) or secondary education (29%) and most farmers in all the counties grew maize (71%). Notably, fellow farmers were a source of information (71%) with the frequency of sharing information being mostly seasonal (37%) and when information was available (43%). Over 66% of interviewed farmers indicating that they faced challenges while using provided information. The results from the study are insightful and helpful in determining effective ways of providing farmers with useful information to ensure maximum benefits.

Dendritic cells derived from pluripotent stem cells:Potential of large scale production

Human pluripotent stem cells(hPSCs), including human embryonic stem cells and human induced pluripotent stem cells, are promising sources for hematopoietic cells due to their unlimited growth capacity and the pluripotency. Dendritic cells(DCs), the unique immune cells in the hematopoietic system, can be loaded with tumor specific antigen and used as vaccine for cancer immunotherapy. While autologous DCs from peripheral blood are limited in cell number, hPSC-derived DCs provide a novel alternative cell source which has the potential for large scale production. This review summarizes recent advances in differentiating hPSCs to DCs through the intermediate stage of hematopoietic stem cells. Step-wise growth factor induction has been used to derive DCs from hPSCs either in suspension cultureof embryoid bodies(EBs) or in co-culture with stromal cells. To fulfill the clinical potential of the DCs derived from hPSCs, the bioprocess needs to be scaled up to produce a large number of cells economically under tight quality control. This requires the development of novel bioreactor systems combining guided EB-based differentiation with engineered culture environment. Hence, recent progress in using bioreactors for hPSC lineage-specific differentiation is reviewed. In particular, the potential scale up strategies for the multistage DC differentiation and the effect of shear stress on hPSC differentiation in bioreactors are discussed in detail.

Multidisciplinary design optimization on production scale of underground metal mine

In order to ensure overall optimization of the underground metal mine production scale, multidisciplinary design optimization model of production scale which covers the subsystem objective function of income of production, safety and environmental impact in the underground metal mine was established by using multidisciplinary design optimization method. The coupling effects from various disciplines were fully considered, and adaptive mutative scale chaos immunization optimization algorithm was adopted to solve multidisciplinary design optimization model of underground metal mine production scale. Practical results show that multidisciplinary design optimization on production scale of an underground lead and zinc mine reflect the actual operating conditions more realistically, the production scale is about 1.25 Mt/a (Lead and zinc metal content of 160 000 t/a), the economic life is approximately 14 a, corresponding coefficient of production profits can be increased to 15.13%, safety factor can be increased to 5.4% and environmental impact coefficient can be reduced by 9.52%.

An intelligent system for calculating the scale of rational,enlarged production of an underground non-ferrous metal mine

The enlarged production scale of underground non-ferrous metal mines is affected by many uncertain factors difficult to describe mathematically with any level of accuracy.The problem can be solved by a synthesis of artificial intelligence.Based on the analysis of the major factors affecting the scale of enlarged production,we first interpreted in detail the design principles and structure of the intelligent system.Secondly,we introduced an ANN subsystem.In order to ensure technological and scale efficien- cies of the training samples for ANN,we filtrated the samples with a DEA method.Finally,we trained the intelligent system,which was proved to be very efficient.

An Empirical Study on the Moderate Scale of Food-production-based Family Farm in Guangxi

The moderate scale family farm is the future agricultural business entity in China,and the scale of family farm is a key factor affecting its development.With Guigang City in Guangxi as a point for the study,from the perspective of maximizing income of rural households,this paper uses production function model to calculate the moderate scale of food-production-based family farm at 5.7 ha,and makes policy recommendations.

Study on the Production Benefit of Large-scale Tobacco Growers

The tobacco growers with the growing area of greater than or equal to 100 mu,have become an important subject of tobacco production in Weng'an County of Guizhou Province. Regulating and developing the production and business activities of large-scale tobacco growers, plays an important role in stabilizing tobacco production,reducing costs and increasing efficiency in Weng'an County. Through the field survey of large-scale growers' production activities,this article analyzes the input and output levels,and explores the key factors influencing benefit, in order to provide a basis for further regulating the tobacco growing practices and improving the flue-cured tobacco production benefit.

Impact of Small-scale Production Mode on Citrus Industry of Hunan Province,China——Based on the Investigation on Citrus Industry in Shimen County

Small-scale farmer is defined by the domestic and foreign experts and scholars.They point out that since the fragmentation of production and the diseconomy of scale in small-scale farmer is inconsistent with the characteristics of scale and technology of modern agricultural production,it is necessary to eliminate the adverse effects of existing mode in order to provide theoretical references for the relevant researches.Citrus industry in Shimen County,Hunan Province,China is introduced from the aspects of natural geographical condition and socio-economic benefit.Impact of small-scale production mode on citrus production in Shimen County is discussed.Firstly,blindness of small-scale production is the main reason leading to overproduction of citrus.Secondly,small-scale production mode has limitation on the acceptance of new technologies,restricts the operation of geographical trademark,and constraints the enthusiasm of enterprises in entering the agricultural field.Finally,suggestions are put forward,such as encouraging the circulation of rural land,improving the organization degree of farmers,changing the work function of grass-roots government and perfecting the agricultural financial credit system.

Sustainable Potato Production in the Mountain Area of Ecuador, an Approach to Increase Productivity with Small Scale Farmers

Ecuador potato crop is family based production system. Potato production has two roles in their economy, the first is providing food for their families and the second is a source of income for the household. However small scale farmers have limited access to local markets and most of the sales are through intermediates’ who purchase directly in the field at the lowest price possible. Potato production challenges for the small-scale farmers are among others availability of quality potato seed, direct sales, purchase of agrochemical inputs to maintain their crops and lack of education. In 2021, only 4% of potato farmers used certified seed. Potato yield is still low around 16.1 t·ha-1, in the last 10 years the total potato cultivated area was reduced by at least 50%. The farmers produce “Bokashi” and other organic fertilizer and these are effective to improve soil fertility and plant health. Homemade bio-pesticides reduce agrochemical pesticides. The Decision Support System (DSS) is a handheld device to control late blight, minimizes fungicide applications and improve fungicide rotation. In 2018 Candidatus Liberibacter solanacearum (Lso), the causal agent of zebra chip, and its vector, the potato psyllid Bactericera cockerelli, together created havoc for farmers and researchers. Promotion of early potato varieties INIAP—Libertad is an alternative to lower the impact of this newest pest.

基于Scale-free网络的客户协同创新合作伙伴选择

为在大量创新客户中筛选出协同创新伙伴,提出基于Scale-free网络的客户协同创新合作伙伴选择方法。首先根据在线社区中客户间关系建立创新客户网络拓扑结构模型,并对创新客户网络的Scale-free特性进行验证,然后应用Scale-free网络的中心化指标初步筛选出创新合作伙伴,在此基础上应用网络效率指标对Scale-free网络的中心化指标进行评定,并选择最终的创新合作伙伴,最后通过某品牌在线社区创新客户数据实例验证了方法的可行性与有效性。

Wear Resistance of CO_2 Corrosion Product Scale Formed at High Temperature

To investigate the correlation between structure characteristics and wear resistance of CO2 corrosion product scales at high temperature and high pressure, an autoclave was used to prepare CO2 corrosion product scales on N80 steel in carbon dioxide corrosion environment. The correlation between wear resistance of the scales and many other factors, such as temperature, pressure, morphology, structure, velocity of fluid medium, sand grain size, and so on, was comparatively analyzed by a self assembled wear device, and the scale morphologies before or after being worn were observed by scanning electron microscope （SEM）. And then the surface grain size and thickness of scale were measured. The results showed that the cross-section of the corrosion scale was of a double-layer structure, the outer layer of which was composed of regular crystals, whereas the inner layer was a thin scale of fine grains. The outer grain size and thickness of scale varied with temperature, and the initial wear loss was consistent with the surface grain size; at the same time, the total wear loss corresponded to the thickness of scale. Compared to wear resist- ance in different depths of the scale, it was found that the structure of scale was a double-layer structure in cross-section, and the wear resistance of inner layer was better than that of the outer layer; the closer the scale to the matrix, the greater was the wear resistance of scale; and the larger the size or the higher the rotary speed of solid grain in multiphase flowing medium, the more was the wear loss of scale.

The evolution of tea spatial agglomeration in China:An analysis based on different geographical scales

The spatial agglomeration of agricultural production is conducive to reducing planting costs, increasing production efficiency and improving product quality. It is an important way to promote the transformation and upgrad of tea industry and realize the modernization of China's tea industry. This study used Gini coefficient and spatial autocorrelation analysis to explore the characteristics of tea spatial agglomeration in China from three geographical scales: regional level, provincial level and prefecture level from the year 2005 to 2015. The results indicated that there was a significant scale effect on the tea spatial agglomeration. The agglomeration degree increased from the regional level, provincial level to prefecture level. The types of spatial agglomeration evolution of the three scales were Ushaped, continuous diffusion, and continuous agglomeration. The spatial autocorrelation of tea production could only be found at the prefecture level. Meanwhile, at the prefecture scale, we could not only reveal the pattern changes at the regional and provincial levels, but also identify tea production agglomeration regions. Compared with the large scale, the small scale could reveal the characteristics of tea spatial agglomeration in more details. Factors such as natural resource endowments, cost factor, technological advancement, agglomeration economy, and agricultural policy influenced the evolution of tea spatial agglomeration from different geographical scales. Finally, from the perspectives of spatial transfer of tea production, promoting spatial agglomeration, building tea production bases, and breaking administrative boundaries, we proposed several policy suggestions for optimizing the spatial layout of tea production.

Technical efficiency and its determinants in China's hog production

China＇s hog production is undergoing a great transformation due to the soaring demand and changing raising system. Regarding the essential role of pork in Chinese diet, a systematic analysis on the productivity and efficiency of hog production can provide significant implications for policy makers. This paper investigates the productivity and efficiency of hog production and the determinants of technical efficiency in China using a household level panel data（2004–2010）. A stochastic frontier translog production function with scaling property in inefficiency term is adopted for hog production analysis, and the determinants of technical efficiency are incorporated in a one-step estimation using maximum likelihood estimation. Our results show that the average technical efficiency of hog production in China is 0.5914. More importantly, we find that specialized farmers have higher technical efficiency than others, and technical efficiency in the eastern region is higher than that in Central and West China.

Empirical Research on E-commerce to Increase the Scale of Agricultural Products Trade: Taking Guangxi Hezhou Zhengfeng Modern Agriculture Co.,Ltd. as an Example

Agriculture is the foundation of the national economy.The periodicity of agricultural product output and prices,the asymmetry of information between buyers and sellers,and the inherent characteristics of small scale,high cost,and low profit have caused slow sales,which greatly hurt the enthusiasm of farmers to develop production and endanger social stability.Constructing an informationized and commercialized trading platform and an information sharing platform through e-commerce and establishing related systems and supervision mechanisms will help to promote the rapid growth of agricultural product sales.Research has shown that in the field of agricultural circulation,e-commerce has a significant effect on increasing the scale of agricultural trade.

Efficiency Evaluation of Effect of Direct Grain Subsidy Policy on Performance of Rice Production

Using the DEA analysis method,on the basis of the national panel data from 2002 to 2014,this paper made a comparative analysis on the rice production performance before and after the implementation of direct grain subsidy policy,and made an empirical analysis on the relationship between the direct grain subsidy policy and the changes in the rice production performance. The results showed that the effect of the direct grain subsidy policy on promoting the rice production performance is declining year by year,largely because drop of scale efficiency. Besides,there are problems of serious redundancy in agricultural subsidy,unreasonable resource allocation,leading to low performance and resource waste of rice production.

Gap models across micro-to mega-scales of time and space:examples of Tansley’s ecosystem concept

Background:Gap models are individual-based models for forests.They simulate dynamic multispecies assemblages over multiple tree-generations and predict forest responses to altered environmental conditions.Their development emphases designation of the significant biological and ecological processes at appropriate time/space scales.Conceptually,they are with consistent with A.G.Tansley’s original definition of"the ecosystem".Results:An example microscale application inspects feedbacks among terrestrial vegetation change,air-quality changes from the vegetation’s release of volatile organic compounds(VOC),and climate change effects on ecosystem production of VOC’s.Gap models can allocate canopy photosynthate to the individual trees whose leaves form the vertical leaf-area profiles.VOC release depends strongly on leaf physiology by species of these trees.Leaf-level VOC emissions increase with climate-warming.Species composition change lowers the abundance of VOC-emitting taxa.In interactions among ecosystem functions and biosphere/atmosphere exchanges,community composition responses can outweigh physiological responses.This contradicts previous studies that emphasize the warming-induced impacts on leaf function.As a mesoscale example,the changes in climate(warming)on forests including pest-insect dynamics demonstrates changes on the both the tree and the insect populations.This is but one of many cases that involve using a gap model to simulate changes in spatial units typical of sampling plots and scaling these to landscape and regional levels.As this is the typical application scale for gap models,other examples are identified.The insect/climatechange can be scaled to regional consequences by simulating survey plots across a continental or subcontinental zone.Forest inventories at these scales are often conducted using independent survey plots distributed across a region.Model construction that mimics this sample design avoids the difficulties in modelling spatial interactions,but we also discuss simulation at these scales with contagion effects.Conclusions:At the global-scale,successful simulations to date have used functional types of plants,rather than tree species.In a final application,the fine-scale predictions of a gap model are compared with data from micrometeorological eddy-covariance towers and then scaled-up to produce maps of global patterns of evapotranspiration,net primary production,gross primary production and respiration.New active-remote-sensing instruments provide opportunities to test these global predictions.

Robust Corner Detection Based on Multi-scale Curvature Product in B-spline Scale Space

这份报纸在 B 花键弯曲规模空间的框架论述一种多尺度的弯曲产品角落察觉技术。规模产品功能在不同规模从轮廓的弯曲产品被导出。角落被 thresholding 作为本地最大值构造越过几规模的弯曲产品结果。通过规模产品，本地化精确性和察觉表演能显著地以 CNN 标准被改进。实验也证明那个建议方法显示出坚韧性到高频率细节并且提供有希望的察觉结果。

Land Scale, Input-Output and Income

Based on the investigation of production, inputs and income of tobacco farmers in 337 families in 10 counties of which the specialty is tobacco in Henan Province in 2010, the differences in the production, inputs and income were discussed. Results suggested that in terms of land yield rate and tobacco growers income, the suitable proportion of land for tobacco production in Henan Province is from 0.33 to 0.67 hm2.

Agricultural Production Efficiency of Chongqing Based on DEA

Literatures about agricultural production efficiency are reviewed.Concept of DEA Method,as well as the definition methods of effective DEA and scale efficiency increase are introduced.According to the relevant statistical data in the years 1997-2007 in Chongqing Municipality,efficiency of agricultural economy is calculated from the year 1997 to 2007 by DEA method and the scale efficiency is also analyzed by taking the total output of agriculture,forestry,animal husbandry and fishery industry as the output index.And the input index includes total workforce in agriculture,forestry,animal husbandry and fishery,the total sown area of crops,the total power of agricultural machinery,chemical fertilizer application,the draft animal,and the effective irrigation area.Result shows that Chongqing City became a municipality directly under the central government;its agricultural production efficiency is still low.And the sustainable development capacity of agricultural is weak in Chongqing,and the agricultural resources are not fully used.Based on this,related suggestions are put forward to improve the agricultural production efficiency of Chongqing,such as implementing an appropriate management scale of land,improving the organization degree of peasant households and the rate of industrialization management,enhancing the quality of the rural labor force,strengthening the agricultural science and technology input and extension,perfecting the construction of rural infrastructure,and improving the rate of resource utilization.

Literature Review of Agricultural Scale Management and Efficiency

Scale management remains the core position in entire development process of the economics and is a major issue of academic research and government concern. Focusing on related problems of agricultural scale management,this paper explored 4 aspects of past literature.( i) It defined the agricultural scale management based on economies of scale theory and changes in returns to scale.( ii) From the perspective of the returns to scale of grain production,there are changes in returns to scale of China's grain production,but the measured changes are not significant.( iii) Existing analysis on factors influencing agricultural scale management mainly includes factors influencing farmers' willingness of scale management and restrictive factors of implementation of scale management.( iv) In studies of the relationship between land management scale and production efficiency,many scholars made qualitative and quantitative analysis on land scale efficiency on the basis of economic indicators they defined,but they reached different conclusions. Finally,it summarized literature and pointed out several issues needing special attention in this field.

Analysis of Pig Price Fluctuation in Recent Decade Based on the Changes in Breeding Scale

In recent decade, the fluctuation of pig price has become more and more acute with obvious periodicity. Currently, the pig breeding mode dominated by individual households leads to acute fluctuation of pig price to some extent. The scale expansion of recent decade intensified the fluc- tuation of pig price in the short term but will stabilize the price in the long term. Therefore. it is necessary to expand breeding scale for maintaining long-term price stability and the optimal scale should be chosen according to the circumstances to ensure the social benefit maximization.