Agriculture

Forward contracting can help reduce the problem of inputs supply risk which is inherent in Nigeria’s agriculture. This research work concentrated on the prospect of the strategy among crop farmers and agricultural input marketers. ‘The results of the study revealed that majority of the respondents’ supported forward contracting of inputs and were willing to engage in the strategy. However, low capital base of enterprise, possible default by farmers and late payments are possible reasons why Agricultural input marketers may not be willing to go into a forward contract with crop farmers. The age of farmer, number of crop enterprises, years of experience, capital base of farmer and extension visits were significant factors influencing farmers’ willingness to engage in forward contracting of inputs. There is need to create more awareness about ‘forward contracts’ among agricultural input marketers and farmers in the country. Agricultural credit should be made affordable, available and accessible to input marketers by Micro Finance Banks and the Nigeria Agricultural Bank to improve their capital base. State and Local Government Authorities in collaboration with farmers’ cooperative societies should stand as guarantors for Farmers who are willing to engage in forward contracting.

Sciences and technologies in the era of globalisation have gone extra mile in making non patented data and information accessible and most often free of charge to fellow scientists, technologists and the entire public. For civilised worlds they are vital for national and economic planning. In the era of internet, developed as world wide web; information and communication technologies have assisted researchers, scientists, publishers and consumers share on global commodity of the brain, mind and soul. It is on this note that this paper delves into detailed field and laboratory data generated on soil respiration-temperature-moisture relationships as an addition to global data bank. They are very crucial for comparative studies and for developing networking geared towards abating greenhouse gases emissions holocaust. The world is sitting on a keg of gunpowder that is neglected in pursuit of non-nuclear proliferation, nuclear accident and nuclear war. Already, there are global warming and climatic change wars raging all over the planet. Let us develop and share data and information that can warn the government and citizenry on scientific and technological dangers of the world that are similar to nuclear holocaust. It is a problem of developed and undeveloped worlds as nature knows no boundary akin to territory boundary protections.

An electronic device based on capacitive sensor was developed to predict the volume of banana fruit. This system, which is used for volume measurement has four components: a rectangular parallel plate capacitor, electronic circuitry, microcontroller, and display unit. After calibrating the electronic system, the results were verified with calibrated curve by means of linear regression and paired t-test. The coefficient of determination (R2) for 1, 10, 100, and 450 kHz frequencies were obtained as 0.934, 0.88, 0.932, and 0.935, respectively. The acquired P-values for 1, 10, 100, and 450 kHz frequencies were 0.541, 0.448, 0.132, and 0.064. The results indicated that banana fruits size has no effect on the accuracy of the computed volume. The results for banana fruits showed that the predicted volume and actual volume are highly correlated and this method is ideal for determining the volume of fruits and it can be developed for other fruits, too.

Waste is an unavoidable by product of human activities. All the human activities ie., domestic, commercial, industrial, healthcare, organizations, generates solid wastes that are normally discarded as useless or unwanted. The wastes generated from these activities of more advanced society produce more complex and heterogeneous wastes because of living standards and changing food habits. With rising urbanization, change in life style and improving living standards in cities; have led to increase in per capita waste generation and complexity of generated waste in the recent years. The problem in cities lies not only in the quantity but also in the quality and composition of the wastes, which have changed from being dense and almost entirely organic to voluminous and increasing non-biodegradable with higher percentage of toxic substance. The exponential growths of human population & resource consumption have left outstripped the ability of the natural environment to assimilate it and municipal authorities to manage it. Increasing migration, high-density population will make waste management a difficult issue to handle in the near future.

The bedrock of agricultural development in developing countries of sub-saharan Africa is rural development, without which all efforts at agricultural development will be futile. Agricultural development can only be attained if necessary rural infrastructural facilities are adequately provided in rural areas. This study assessed the availability of rural infrastructural facilities and its effect on agricultural productivity of rural dwellers in Abeokuta North local government area of Ogun state. Interview schedule was used to elicit information from 120 rural dwellers from six rural communities. Information obtained was subjected to descriptive and inferential statistics. Availability of seven rural infrastructural facilities was assessed. The results showed that roads were available to all the respondents while electricity (70.83%) and schools (83.33%) were available to majority of the respondents. Majority of the rural dwellers reported the proper functioning of roads (66.67%) and schools (82%) while partial functioning was recorded for electricity (60%), portable water (50%) and storage facilities (66.67%). The study concludes that sustainable rural development is a function of the availability and accessibility of rural infrastructural facilities to rural dwellers who are mainly small scale farmers. It was recommended that government should make provision for infrastructural facilities in rural areas of the local government.

Over the decade, the problems of national food nutrition and fibre crises have been on the increase and the ghost chasing the economy is no longer a figment of the imagination. The time has come for a definitive attack. This paper examined the economics of promoting increased food production through efficient inputs services and farm-rural infrastructures. The basic agricultural inputs for modernized commercial production are land, Labour, modern farm capital, water, climate, power and entrepreneurship, while basic infrastructures that promote agricultural production include rural, physical, social, institutional and farm facilities. These inputs and infrastructures interact, thus have competitive, complimentary supportive, joint effect and consequently; the economics of inputs-infrastructures promotion raises quantitative, management, organizational, institutional and costs return implications that merit substantial research efforts in the context of the atomistic population of small holder farmers in Nigeria. Although government may facilitates, stimulates and promotes growth of Agriculture food production programme, success must ultimately depend on the multitude of farm household. To secure food security for the teaming population, various motivated programmes (farm settlement) and the co-operationalized systems must be updated. Hence Inputs-land, Labour, capital, power and entrepreneurship must be earnest in a way to favour production and basic rural-farm infrastructures. Keywords: Food production, Input services, Rural infrastructures

A system was designed and fabricated to grade apples automatically based on their size using machine vision, in this study. The device included unites to single out, orient and grade apples. A cylinder container with circular hole in bottom which was equipped with agitator was built to single out the apples. This mechanism delivered apples to orientation unit, one by one. Two wooden rails with a specific form which was located on the ramp via adequate slope was used to orient the apples during rolling. After the orientation, apples were placed below the camera to take its photo. The photos were transferred to computer for image processing to determine the grade of apples based on their size. A belt conveyor carries the apples and set them in appropriate place regards to their grade. As a final point, the wind spray valve is opened and the apple is pushed to the marked box. In order to evaluate the constructed system, 10 red and golden delicious apples of each grade were chosen and the completely randomized design test was conducted. The results demonstrated that the most time consumed related to image processing. Almost%85 of apples were properly oriented in the orientation unit and graded correctly. The overall system performance was appropriate, thus the system can be used to grade apples automatically.

The CENTURY 4.0 Model have many variables that can be simulated. One of them is microbial respiration. In soil carbon studies there are three principal parts: total organic carbon, CO2-C and CO2. They are used to quantify soil carbon storage, microbial biomass and microbial respiration respectively. Soil total carbon comes from photosynthesis, translocation, decomposition, mineralisation processes. Soil CO2-C gives basic mass of microbial communities while soil CO2 is indicator of microbial respiratory activities. They are complimentary and supplementary approaches to virtual soil health. They are strong indicators of life in the soil media. The CENTURY 4.0 Model has additional benefit of simulating microbial respiration. In this study measured and simulated soil microbial respiration was compared in a Hanslope Soil under different land management practices. The simulated results started with ages record of 59.6 g m-2 y-1 soil respiratory rate to as low as 0.001 g m-1 y-1 in other periods of perturbations and human civilisation that impinged on natural processes of soil regeneration.

The effects of dewaxing on the physico-chemical properties of some brands of vegetable oil have been investigated. Five (5) brands of crude vegetable oil including soybean oil (SO), beniseed oil (BO),cottonseed oil (CSO) and palm kernel oil (PKO) were used for these investigations. The physico-chemical properties and the wax contents were determined before and after the dewaxing operation. The wax contents (ppm), saponification numbers, % free fatty acid contents, slip melting points (0C) of the oil samples were reduced while the iodine values of the oil samples increased after the dewaxing operation. The dewaxed oil samples showed good abilities to withstand refrigerator temperature.

Despite that plantain marketing could be used as one of the economic options of breaking the vicious circle of poverty in Nigeria, studies seems not to have existed on the marketing of processed plantain in Umuahia South Local Government Area of Abia State, Nigeria. The study employed a combination of multistage and purposive random sampling techniques to collect data from 120 marketers. In line with the specific objectives, the data generated were analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The results of the analysis revealed that about 67% of the marketers were females who are within the active mean productive age of 32 years. It further showed that plantain are being processed into chips, flour, beverages, plantain ball, pastry, roasted plantain with plantain chips, plantain pastry, and roasted plantain being the most marketed processed plantain in the area. Meanwhile, the identified marketing activities performed by the marketers include advertisement, promotion, packaging, and after sells service in which case, the coefficients of advertisement and promotion (x?) were negatively signed and statistically significant at 5% level; and the coefficients of packaging (X?) and after sells service being positively signed and statistically significant at 1% level. Using the Benefit-Costs-Ratio analysis to determine the return to investment, it was observed that the most economically viable options of marketing plantain is by processing and selling roasted planting, plantain chips, plantain beverages, plantain pastry, plantain flour, and plantain balls. The study recommended for the provision of adequate marketing infrastructures by government and other NGOs to enable marketers make good returns from the marketing of processed plantain within the area.