Operations Improvement Function and Organisational Adaptability of Petroleum Tank Farms in South-South, Nigeria

The study examined the nexus between operations improvement function (dimensioned by contingency planning, benchmarking and continuous improvement processes) and organisational adaptability of Petroleum tank farms in South-South, Nigeria. The contingency theory and the theory of routine dynamics underpinned the study, and positivism was the underlying philosophy. The study adopted the cross-sectional survey through the use of questionnaire. 820 middle and top-level managers constituted the elements of the population, and the Krejcie & Morgan’s formula was used to determine the sample size of 262 respondents. Structural Equation Modeling was deployed to test the hypotheses at a 0.05 significance level. The results showed that contingency planning;benchmarking and continuous improvement processes all have a significant positive relationship with organisational adaptability of Petroleum tank farms in South-South, Nigeria. The study concludes that Petroleum tank farms’ operations should focus on the adoption of contingency planning, benchmarking and continuous improvement processes to enhance organisational adaptability. Therefore, it is recommended that the management of Petroleum tank farms should put in place mechanisms to advance continuous improvement processes by allocating the necessary amount of resources, such as energy, time and money, in order to promote the continuous development of the continuous improvement systems. Furthermore, managers of Petroleum tank farms should make better the adoption of contingency planning, ensuring that there is as much necessary training and information for employees on how to act during a crises situation, in order to evaluate safety and prepare in advance for recovery from disasters.

Energy Analysis in Irrigated Sugarcane Schemes of Awash River Basin, Ethiopia

Sugarcane is one of the important irrigated crops in Ethiopia and its production is highly linked with its energy and water use. In this paper, identifications and quantifications of input and output, direct and indirect energy sources, and energy use of farm operations were carried out on 11 irrigation schemes of Awash River Basin. In order to grow 91.8 to 167.6 tons of cane, 47.9 to 143.4 GJ/ha of total energy was used. Average total input energies of gravity, pump surface and sprinkler scheme categories to grow 109.8, 112.7 and 136.3 ton/ha were 53.6, 68.9 and 129.2 GJ/ha, respectively. Around 90% and 74% total energies of gravity surface and sprinkler schemes were consumed as direct and indirect energies, respectively. Irrigation found to be the most energy consuming operation constituting more than 50% input energy of all scheme categories. Energy efficiency of gravity schemes was 152% and 300% higher than pump driven surface and sprinkler schemes. Energy sequestrated in cane straws burned during harvesting found to be higher than fertilizer and pumping energy demands. Use of cane straws as manure and energy sources have the potential to substitute demands which in turn needs further investigations and analysis.

Smartphone based precise monitoring method for farm operation

Although Global Navigation Satellite System(GNSS)terminal has been widely used for fleet management,it cannot satisfy the need of managing changes of laborer and implement during farm operation,which are important for social service cooperatives comparing to family farms in China.The objective of this study was to explore a precise,low cost and easy-to-use method for vehicle fleet management of large scale farm machinery cooperatives.A smartphone based application software(APP)named Precise Monitoring System(PMS)was developed to record the farm operation information including tractor,implement and laborer by scanning their Quick Response codes(QR codes),and obtain real time GNSS positions by using built-in GNSS chip of smartphone.Considering the convenience usage for farmers,only two buttons,“start/pause/continue”and“stop”were designed to record farm operation status.Finally,IDs,positions and operation status were combined and transferred to the server through GPRS/3G/4G.Two kinds of experiments were designed and conducted to verify the PMS.The results showed that PMS can realize the basic functions such as precise and real-time monitoring,operation quality tracing,operation mileage and operation area calculating,and U-turn processing.The method and APP could record complex combination of production factors precisely and accurately,which is suitable for the management of vehicle fleet,and can replace GNSS terminal to some extent.

Are China＇s Farms Growing？

China＇s agricultural sector faces challenges because most farms are still small scale. China＇s policy is to encourage the consolidation o f farms and promote farms that are larger in scale. A question that arises is： Are China＇s farms growing？ The goal of the present paper is to determine whether large farms in China have emerged or iffarms remain small. To meet this goal, we systematically document the trends in the operational sizes of China＇s farms and measure the determinants of changes in farm size. Using a nationally representative dataset, the study shows that in 2013 China＇s farming sector was still mostly characterized by small-scale farms. However, at the same time, there is an emerging class of middle-sized and larger-sized farms. Most large farms are being run by households but there is a set of large farms that are companylcooperative-run. Today, farmers on larger farms are younger and better educated than the average farmer.