1,721,213 research outputs found
Mali fraudulent pesticide survey
No full textThis data set includes responses from 122 pesticide retailers operating in 10 different markets across Mali. The survey took place in June 2019. Data include detailed listing of all pesticide products sold in the prior 12 months
Bringing the Poor into a Growth Agenda: What Role for Africa’s Rural Nonfarm Economy?
Full text linkDistributed as: Appendix 1. Background Paper for Agriculture and Lands. African Ministers Meeting, April 2009. Prepared under the Food Security III Cooperative Agreement (GDG-A- 00-02-00021-00) between the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics, Michigan State University, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).agriculture, growth, poor, food security, Food Security and Poverty, Q12,
Alternative Approaches for Moderating Food Insecurity and Price Volatility in Zambia.
Full text link• Maize production varies widely from year to year, given Zambia’s heavy dependence on rainfed cultivation. Thus consumers face wide swings in availability of their primary food staple. • Typical public responses include increased food aid inflows, government commercial imports and stock releases, and tight controls on private sector trade. While intended to improve domestic supply, these public responses can inadvertently exacerbate price instability and food insecurity for Zambian consumers. • Two key private sector responses – private cross-border maize trade and consumer substitution of alternate food staples (such as cassava) for maize - can also help to moderate food consumption volatility. • Together, private imports and increased cassava consumption could fill roughly two-thirds of the maize consumption shortfall facing vulnerable households during drought years. • But policy changes – including more open borders and greater transparency in public import and pricing decisions – will be required to induce the private sector to expand imports, storage and production of key staples and, in turn, improve food security for the poor consumers in Zambia.food security, food policy, Zambia, Food Security and Poverty, Q20,
Spatial and Regional Dimensions of Food Security in Zambia
Full text linkZambia’s population clusters tightly in cities along the north-south line of rail and in the primarily rural areas of Eastern Province (Figure 1). Staple food consumption and purchases are similarly concentrated in these heavily populated clusters (Figures 4 and 5). Across the border, several high-density population centers lie close to the Zambian border — in the copperbelt cities of southern DRC, in the highlands of southern Tanzania, in Malawi and in Zimbabwe (Figure 2). This results in sizeable potential food markets for Zambian farmers across the border in southern DRC and, intermittently, in Zimbabwe and Malawi. Zambia’s staple food production and sales likewise cluster spatially in three main areas: along the line of rail, in the large commercial farming blocks of north-central Zambia, and to a lesser extent in Eastern Province (Figure 6). This spatial clustering offers opportunities for Zambia to benefit from regional trade in food staples. In normal and good harvest years, significant export potential exists in matching the large cereal-producing blocks in north-central Zambia with the nearby copperbelt cities of both Zambia and DRC. Conversely, in years of domestic shortfall, significant import supplies may be available from cross-border farmers and traders in southern Tanzania, northern Mozambique and, in time, Zimbabwe. If Zambian farmers are to invest in the productive capacity necessary to serve these external markets, they will require consistent and predictable trade policies. Figure 1.Zambia, food security, Africa, staple food production, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Food Security and Poverty, International Relations/Trade, q18, q13, q17,
Prospects for equitable growth in rural sub-Saharan Africa
Full text linkImproving agricultural technology equitably in Africa has been difficult in the past because of the vast differences, as well as weak institutions and infrastructure in its many regions. However, the prospects for equitable growth are good for several reasons. The distribution of land has not deteriorated, and there are few landless people in Africa. Technical packages do not favor large farms over small ones, and Africa's social institutions support people with a safety net for sources of income. The author, however, points out that equitable growth, though possible is not assured and several research and policy initiatives will be needed to capitalize on the potential. First, research must continue to focus on technology appropriate for small farms and crops. Policy makers must no longer withhold assistance from service enterprises or nonfarm activities of women. Rural infrastructure has to be upgraded, and finally, governments will need to monitor land tenure and tenancy.Economic Theory&Research,Agricultural Research,Crops&Crop Management Systems,Environmental Economics&Policies,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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