Teruaki Nanseki

Monitoring system for farming operations with wearable devices utilized sensor networks

In order to automatically monitor farmers’ activities, we propose a farm operation monitoring system using “Field Servers” and a wearable device equipped with an RFID reader and motion sensors. Our proposed system helps in recognizing farming operations by analyzing the data from the sensors and detected RFID tags that are attached to various objects such as farming materials, facilities, and machinery. This method can be applied to various situations without changing the conventional system. Moreover, this system provides useful information in real-time and controls specific machines in a coordinated manner on the basis of recognized operation.

Risk Governance in Bulgarian Dairy Farming

This paper identifies and assesses the efficiency of major modes for risk governance in Bulgarian dairy farming. Firstly, New Institutional Economics is incorporated and framework for analyzing governance of natural, market, private, and social (institutional) risks presented. Next, major types of risks faced by the dairy farms are specified and dominant market, private, public and hybrid modes of risk governance assessed. Finally, principal forms of risks caused by the dairy farms are identified, and efficiency of governing structure assessed. The development of Bulgarian dairy farming has been associated with quite specific risk structures facing by and causing from this sector. The huge market and institutional instability and uncertainty, and the high transaction costs, blocked evolution of effective market and collective modes for risk protection. A variety of private modes (internal organization, vertical integration, interlinking) emerged to deal with the significant natural, market, private, and social risks faced by the dairy farms and the other affected agents. Nevertheless, diverse risks associated with the dairy farming have not been effectively governed and persist during transition now. That is a consequence of ineffective public (Government, international assistance) intervention to correct market and private sector failures in the risk governance. The later have had considerable negative impacts on the evolution of farms, development of markets, structure of production and consumption, state of environment etc. Certain risks related to the dairy sector “disappeared” due to the lack of effective risk governance and the declining dairy farming. That would lead to further deformation in development of the dairy and related sectors unless effective public measures are taken to mitigate existing problems and risks.

Farm Operation Monitoring System with Wearable Sensor Devices Including RFID

To increase agricultural productivity and promote efficient management in modern agriculture, it is important to monitor the field environment, crop conditions, and farming operations instead of simply relying on farmers’ experiences and senses. However, it is difficult to realize such monitoring automatically and precisely, because agricultural fields are widely spaced and have few infrastructures, monitoring targets vary according to crop selection and other variables, and many operations are performed flexibly by manual labor. One approach to monitoring in open fields under harsh conditions is to use a sensor network (Akyildiz et al., 2002; Delin & Jackson, 2000; Kahn et al., 1999) of many sensor nodes comprised of small sensor units with radio data links. In our previous study, we developed a sensor network for agricultural use called a Field Server (Fukatsu & Hirafuji, 2005, Fukatsu et al., 2006, Fukatsu et al., 2009a) that enables effective crop and environment monitoring by equipped sensors and autonomous management. Monitoring with Field Servers facilitates growth diagnosis and risk aversion by cooperating with some agricultural applications such as crop growing simulations, maturity evaluations, and pest occurrence predictions (Duthie, 1997; Iwaya & Yamamoto, 2005; Sugiura & Honjo, 1997; Zhang, et al., 2002). However, it is insufficient for obtaining detailed information about farming operations, because these operations are performed flexibly in every nook and cranny depending on crop and environment conditions. Several approaches have been used to monitor farming operations, including writing notes manually, using agricultural equipment with an automatic recording function, and monitoring operations with information technology (IT)-based tools. Keeping a farming diary is a common method, but it is troublesome to farmers and inefficient to share or use their hand-lettered information. Some facilities and machinery can be appended to have an automatic recording function, but it requires considerable effort and cost to make these improvements. Moreover, it is difficult to obtain information about manual tasks, which are important in small-scale farming to realize precision farming and to perform delicate operations such as fruit picking. Several researchers have developed data-input systems that involve farmers using cellphones or PDAs while working to reduce farmers’ effort of recording their operations (Bange et al., 2004; Otuka & Sugawara, 2003; Szilagyi et al., 2005; Yokoyama, 2005; Zazueta

An Analysis of Factors Influencing Household Income: A Case Study of PACT Microfinance in Kyaukpadaung Township of Myanmar

The study investigates factors influencing the household income of both clients and non-clients and effect of microfinance on clients’ socioeconomic characteristics on establishing new enterprises. It uses Cobb-douglas functional form and Logistic regression model with a total sample size of 162 respondents [102 (clients) and 60 (non-clients)]. The empirical results from the model indicate that most common important influencing factor on household income is education. Educational level has a strongly positive impact on household income, suggesting that a client with a higher educational level can generate more income than one with a lower educational level. The results of the pool analysis show that six independent variables—age of the head of household, gender of the head of household, educational level of the head of household, land holding size, number of crops, and established new enterprise—have a significant influence on household income. We found that starting new enterprises is one of the most important factors for increasing the household income of clients. In order to establish new enterprises, the local government should pay more attention to the basic infrastructure requirement, market access facilities in the study area. Private Agency Collaborating Together (PACT) should focus on business training skills, apart from the provision of loans, to create sustainable microenterprises and other economic activities that increase the income of households. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE AR-SA

Perceived food security status – a case study of households in North Luwu, Indonesia

Purpose – The purpose of this study was to investigate the socioeconomic impact on perceived household food security in the North Luwu District of South Sulawesi Province in the eastern part of Indonesia. In Indonesia, 87 million people are presently vulnerable to food insecurity. Thus, the United Nations Development Programme’s primary millennium development goal for Indonesia is to halve the number of people who suffer from hunger by 2015. It is clear that food security at the household level is crucial to achieving this target. Design/methodology/approach – In total, 371 household heads were interviewed. The households’ perceptions of their food security status were captured by asking the household head the following question: “How do you perceive your household’s food security status during the last month”? Respondents could select from the following options: insecure, somewhat insecure, somewhat secure, secure and highly secure. Here, the household head’s answer is regarded as the household’s subject...

Feasibility Study on Field Monitoring and Work Recording System in Agriculture

Simple field monitoring system for optimizing and improving agricultural production process and management is developed by the built-in mail sender data logger unit with some weather and field monitoring sensors. In this monitoring system, all the monitoring data are once transferred and stored to mail servers. Thereafter the data are transferred periodically to the agricultural information database system. The database system was fully developed using open software such as apache (web server), MySQL, PHP, Java, CMS (Contents Management System) and so on. The stability of the monitoring system was verified using more than 20 monitoring units at four test sites where weather, crop type and farm size are different. On the other hand, work recording system to manage and optimize current production process was also developed and integrated to the developed database system. A list of farming processes and schedules was arranged flexibly by a farmer thorough a web browser. All the process data were entered into the information database by using mobile device and/or PC. The availability and validity of the developed recording system were verified by feasibility studies in the real farming sites.

Production efficiency and effect of water management on rice yield in Japan: two-stage DEA model on 110 paddy fields of a large-scale farm

Water management is increasingly important for rice productivity to maintain soil temperature and fertility with the presence of global warming. Meanwhile, rice production in Japan is in urgent need to reduce the costs through improving the efficiency and market competitiveness. This paper aims to measure effect of water depth and water temperature on rice yield of individual paddy fields and improve the practice of water management for them. In the first stage, we measure the production efficiency of rice yield through the adoption of data envelopment analysis. The results indicate that enlarged scale of the paddy fields increases the efficiency, and rice quality can be improved more than quantity. Moreover, the most inefficiently used inputs include the amount of fertilizer nitrogen and the soil capacity, which is a compound measurement of 21 soil chemical properties. In the second stage, after comparing the 20 paddy fields with highest and lowest technical efficiency, an observation shows that the rice yield is much more affected by water temperature than by water depth. The data of all the variables used in this study were sampled in 2015 and comprised of 110 paddy fields of Koshihikari, one of the most popular Japanese rice varieties, from a large-scale farm located in Kanto Region of Japan. In the analysis, the outputs include yields of raw paddy, paddy with 15% moisture, unsorted brown rice, sorted brown rice, milled grain rice, and perfect grain rice. The inputs include the field area, air temperature, solar radiation, fertilizer nitrogen, soil capacity, and farming conditions.Graphical Abstract

Profit efficiency of tea farmers: case study of safe and conventional farms in Northern Vietnam

Safe tea production conducted under the standards of Vietnamese Good Agricultural Practices has been strongly encouraged by the Vietnam government. However, there is no study on profit efficiency of safe tea producers, which are therefore barriers for farmers and policymakers in terms of extending the safe tea production practice in Vietnam. Thus, this study investigated the profit efficiency of tea production practices using a stochastic profit frontier function. We applied propensity score matching to control for self-selection in assessing the profit efficiency of safe and conventional tea farming. Our results indicated that the average profit efficiency of tea farmers was around 74%, suggesting 26% of profit was lost due to inefficiency. Furthermore, significant different profit efficiency was observed between the two farmer groups. We further found that tea farmers with larger production scale, better irrigation system, accessing extension service are more likely to adopt safe tea practices than others are. Thus, public policies should focus on improving profit efficiency and facilitating adoption of eco-friendly production practice, and also supporting innovations to improve farmers’ production conditions, including the access to extension service, irrigation system, enlarged farm size, and labor-saving machinery.

Fertilizer nitrogen, soil chemical properties, and their determinacy on rice yield: Evidence from 92 paddy fields of a large-scale farm in the Kanto Region of Japan

Rice, a staple crop in Japan, is at risk of decreasing production and its yield highly depends on soil fertility. This study aimed to investigate determinants of rice yield, from the perspectives of fertilizer nitrogen and soil chemical properties. The data were sampled in 2014 and 2015 from 92 peat soil paddy fields on a large-scale farm located in the Kanto Region of Japan. The rice variety used was the most widely planted Koshihikari in Japan. Regression analysis indicated that fertilizer nitrogen significantly affected the yield, with a significant sustained effect to the subsequent year. Twelve soil chemical properties, including pH, cation exchange capacity, content of pyridine base elements, phosphoric acid, and silicic acid, were estimated. In addition to silicic acid, magnesia, in forms of its exchangeable content, saturation, and ratios to potassium and lime, positively affected the yield, while phosphoric acid negatively affected the yield. We assessed the soil chemical properties by soil quality index and principal component analysis. Positive effects were identified for both approaches, with the former performing better in explaining the rice yield. For soil quality index, the individual standardized soil properties and margins for improvement were indicated for each paddy field. Finally, multivariate regression on the principal components identified the most significant properties.