大都市近郊農村地域における住宅外観形式の変容に関する研究 : 大阪泉州地域のシコロ葺きを中心として

As part of a research of transition rituals in the Cypriot mountain village of Peristerona I watched the act of baptism and its formal course, content and social impact. This paper focuses on symbolical acts of acceptation of a child both into the community of the Orthodox church and the broader village community. Peristerona is an agricultural village with about 200 permanent residents. Although the village residents have a very close relationship with the nearby town, they have also very close ties with their family, insist on neighbourly relationships, and preserve a number of traditional ceremonies and rituals. Tradition supports a ritual which consists of the acceptation of a child into the closest family, the local community as well as the Orthodox church. A child is accepted into the closest family immediately after its birth and this act is an independent ritual. On the other hand, acceptation into the church and the village community is postponed to a later time, but six months after the birth of the child at the latest. Both rituals make part of a single, comprehensive ritual, which includes the selection of a godfather, a religious ritual in church with an active role played by the priest and the godfather, the ritual of acceptation by the village community connected with a feast and, last but not least, the protection and observation of a child in the transient period which lasts another three days after the baptism is made. Baptism is the most important act in the life of every individual. Without baptism one cannot undergo further vital events in life such as the church wedding or legally valid burial. Baptism is also a vital step for the inclusion of an individual into the local village community. The child is not regarded as a fully-fledged member of a village community unless it is baptised. However, baptism is not only viewed as the acceptation of a child by the Orthodox church and the village community. It also amounts to the creation of a secondary family background the child obtains in godfather's family. The whole process of the acceptation of a child into a local community is gradual and lasts several days. The child is finally included into it only after three days, after the transient period ends. After three days the child is bathed and finally included into the village community without any further acceptation rituals.

Reviewed by: Others in Japanese Agriculture: Koreans, Evacuees and Migrants 1920–1950 by Yasuoka Ken'ichi Tessa Morris-Suzuki Others in Japanese Agriculture: Koreans, Evacuees and Migrants 1920–1950. By Yasuoka Ken'ichi. Translated by Teresa Castelvetere. Kyoto University Press/ Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2018. 374 pages. Hardcover, ¥4,100/ A$84.95. Particularly since the 1990s, the once-prevalent images of Japan as an ethnically homogeneous nation have been subjected to extensive scholarly scrutiny and criticism. [End Page 127] Many studies have shed light on the presence of colonial migrants in Japanese towns and cities and on the struggles of Okinawans, Ainu, and other minorities for recognition. But the critique has rarely extended to rural village society in Honshu, Kyushu, or Shikoku. The image of agriculture and farm villages as relatively homogeneous bedrocks of Japanese tradition, therefore, remains strong. Yasuoka Ken'ichi's meticulously researched study—originally published in Japanese in 2014—offers a powerful challenge to that image.1 Examining the transwar period from the 1920s to the start of the 1950s and focusing mainly on rural areas of Kyoto Prefecture and surrounding regions, Yasuoka explores the histories of various groups of "others" whose presence has complicated the modern history of the Japanese village. In doing so, he sheds powerful new light on Japanese agricultural history as a whole. The most eye-opening section of this study is its relatively long first chapter, which explores the story of Korean migrants in Japanese agriculture. As Yasuoka demonstrates, although the colonial-era flow of Korean migration into Japan was mostly directed toward urban industrial areas, by the 1930s substantial numbers of Koreans were also working as farm laborers. The total number of Koreans engaged in agriculture was not very great when compared to the total size of Japan's rural population, but in some areas Koreans constituted a significant percentage of the workforce of landless agricultural laborers, particularly of sakuotoko and sakuonna (farm laborers employed on a yearly basis). For example, Yasuoka calculates that by 1930 Koreans accounted for 31.9% of these farm workers in Yamaguchi Prefecture and 40.3% in Nara Prefecture (pp. 32–33). As Japan slid further into war in the late 1930s—and as Japanese farmers left the land to join the military, migrate to the colonies, or work in urban war industries—a growing number of Korean farm laborers obtained leases on abandoned farmland and began to establish a more permanent presence in rural villages. A few even became rural landowners in their own right. This seriously alarmed the Japanese authorities, who perceived the villages as wellsprings of ethnic purity from which the next generation of warriors would be born, but the rhetoric of naisen ittai—"Japan and Korea as one body"—made it difficult for them to condemn the trend in public. Yasuoka's careful study of Terada village in Kyoto Prefecture shows how Korean tenant farmers and their Japanese landlords and neighbors interacted and how preexisting local institutions were adjusted in response to the changing rural social structure. After Japan's defeat in war, many of the Korean farmers returned to the Korean Peninsula, but some remained, their presence becoming an issue of controversy during the postwar land-reform process initiated by the Allied Occupation. The "others" who feature in this book, though, are not necessarily non-Japanese. Yasuoka also highlights how intranational and cross-border mobility affected Japanese villages in other ways, creating various categories of "outsider" whose presence enhanced social dynamism but also sometimes gave rise to social tensions. The first of these groups, examined in Chapter 2, consisted of the wartime evacuees from urban or suburban areas who flooded into farm villages in huge numbers during the [End Page 128] Asia-Pacific War. The scale of this human movement was indeed staggering: some five million people moved out of the major urban evacuation zones nationwide, and two and a half million were evacuated from Tokyo alone. Yasuoka reminds us of the sufferings of these evacuees, who often found themselves unemployed, isolated from friends and family, and living in harsh and unfamiliar conditions. But here, as in his discussion of other groups of "outsiders," he is also at pains to...

Potato has multiple benefits and thus can play a vital role in ensuring food security in Ethiopia. However, for diverse reasons, its productivity is low. The farming systems in Ethiopia in which potato is grown, are predominantly mixed farming systems. Most of the research in Ethiopia is focused on crop-specific constraints and thus there is limited research in which the interrelations between crop and livestock management practices are investigated. There is also not enough research focused on combined analysis of soil nutrient and animal feed balances and agronomic and socioeconomic efficiencies at farm level. This study assessed production constraints and agronomic and socioeconomic sustainability of the farming systems in South Ethiopia and explored the possible synergetic options to alleviate major constraints. More specifically, the study intended to quantify the variation in input and output among farms, to identify constraints hindering expansion of potato production, to evaluate the sustainability of the farming systems at farm level, to identify constraints of sustainable intensification, and to explore synergetic solutions for the major constraints. Different research approaches were used ranging from lab analysis, household surveys, group discussions, to farm surveys. Results showed that constraints related to input and product use in potato production vary across households indicating a need for a pluriform advisory model recognizing (and building upon alleviation of) the diversity of constraints identified in this analysis. The sustainability of the farming system is constrained by low agricultural productivity, low soil fertility, poor labour efficiency and limited economic return associated with improper crop rotation, inappropriate soil fertility management practices, shortage of animal feed, labour- and economically inefficient farm practices and labour shortage. However, there is ample scope to overcome the major constraints and simultaneously to optimize farm management. The core messages of the study can be summarized as follows: 1) the current potato production is characterized by low productivity and economic returns due to various socioeconomic, agronomic and biological factors; 2) the soil fertility is low and there is uneven distribution of nutrients over plots with relatively high fertility levels in the homestead areas; 3) the current labour shortage can be attributed to mainly inefficiency of agricultural management practices and labour migration to towns for economic reasons indicating that the farming system is not sustainable in terms of labour; 4) considering the direct return from animal production, most of the farms had very low gross margin with the current management system and this reduced the overall operating profit of farms. The low return from animal rearing was offset by the relatively high profit from crop production indicating the benefit of mixed farming system in sustaining agricultural production; and 5) each farm can have a wide range of optimized solutions mainly through introduction of improved technologies and subsequent redesigning of the farm managements. In general, the findings of the current study indicate that it is worthwhile to assess the sustainability of agricultural production in different farming systems and agro-ecologies of Ethiopia. In addition, the combined effect of introducing improved agricultural technologies and subsequent reconfiguring the farm management is very crucial to increase and sustain agricultural production.

ABSTRACTThe ability of genetically modified (GM) crops to increase yields and reduce use of pesticides is well established. Based on food security needs and the central role of agriculture, Africa may stand to benefit from green biotechnology given the low agricultural productivity and the looming food crises in most urban areas. However, the adoption of GM crops in Africa has been slow and limited to a handful of countries. The primary objective of this paper is to evaluate the impact of GM maize adoption in South Africa by looking at wholesale spot prices. We apply a threshold autoregressive model to time series data on the price of maize and GM adoption rates in South Africa to address the following questions: (1) Does the adoption of GM maize excite the growth rate of price of maize in South Africa; (2) Does the error variance of the maize price growth rate exhibit regime-switching behaviour to impact the volatility? The results show evidence that the adoption of GM maize influences the dynamics of the maize price growth rate in South Africa. Further, there is strong evidence that the error variance exhibits regime-switching behaviour with the posterior mean for the error variance in the first regime about twice as large as that of the second regime.

Rural India is yet a larder of problems like malnourishment, illiteracy, unemployment, poverty, sottishness and lack of basic infrastructure like schools/colleges, hospitals, sanitation, etc. This has pushed to rural youth moving out of villages to work in cities. Present study entitled “A Study on factors responsible for rural urban migration” was conducted to explore the causes behind migration. The study was conducted in two industrially backward districts of Uttar Pradesh viz. Fatehpur and Banda. From each district one block, from each block four villages and from each village 10 respondents were selected through purposive random sampling from the list of families of rural migrants. Thus the total sample size was of 80 respondents. The data were collected by personal interview through structured schedule and simply analyzed through mean score and rank order. After making an exhaustive list of factors with the consultation of local people, causes were categorized in to five categories viz. economic factors, social factors, natural factors, good facilities of cities and other factors. Results of the study revealed that the major economic factors of migration are Employment opportunities, Poverty, Low agriculture productivity, Fragmentation of holding and Indebtedness. Prominent social factors encouraging migration were- Large size of family, Desire to overcome of poverty, Better educational opportunities, Attraction towards better ways of living and Loss of social prestige. Among natural factors Exhaustion of natural resources was reported of highest importance. Important good facilities attracting to people are More avenue for earning better livelihood, Educational facilities, Medical facilities, Communication facilities and Good electric supply etc. Some other factors reported important by the respondents were Lack of basic amenities in rural areas, Better working conditions in the urban areas and Hope of bright future. At the end, investigators felt that there is much more scope to conduct micro studies on migration process and its consequences to the urban as well as rural areas.

Kenyan agriculture is characterized by low agricultural productivity in the midst ofdecreasing soil fertility. The population increase has been brought down from 4% to 2.4% perannum. Feeding of this increasing large population has been daunting especially when there havebeen frequent drought.<br><br>Kenyan agriculture is characterized by low agricultural productivity in the midst of decreasing soilfertility. The national average yield for maize is 1 tonne per hectare at commercial level.<br><br>Kenya happens to have one of the highest bank interest rates in the world. Commercial banks arecharging interest rates above 30% for loans. This has generally impacted negatively on thepromotion of mechanization in Kenya.<br><br>Mechanization is based on imported technology that is sourced from the West. The price oftechnology from the West rises with the fluctuation of the US dollar against local currency.<br><br>The mitigation for use of conservation tillage in Kenya is in reduced cost of production of staple foodcrops. It may result from considerably lower energy and labour input. In the medium to long term, it has been proved elsewhere in other countries that, applied adequately, contil leads to reduction inthe need for agricultural inputs, including fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides.

Our study has demonstrated disappearance of traditional children's play and games and modification in modern sports in Ubon Ratchathani, northeast Thailand from a viewpoint of trend-regional surface. Ubon Ratchathani has been rapidly urbanized and a obvious sociocultural difference of regional characteristics is found between rural and urban areas. We chose three districts of Ban (a farm village), Amphoe (the county capital) and Amphoemuang (the prefectural capital), and conducted a survey on the play and games of the upper grades of elementary school in each distinguishable district. The results are as follows; 1) We observed seventy nine kinds of plays including traditional play and games and sports in these three districts. 2) Traditional play and games were much observed in Ban, but they were gradually disappearing in the urban area, which indicated an ordinal structure of Ban, Amphoe and Amphoemuang as the trend-regional surface. 3) Sports were much observed in Amphoemuang, and they were gradually appearing in the urban area, which indicated an ordinal structure of Amphoemuang, Amphoe and Ban.

Health risk assessment of pesticides residue in maize and cowpea from Ejura, Ghana

This research has accomplished a critical appraisal on landlessness and economic development of Bangladesh through conducting a primary survey and traced out what are the best alternative recommendations to ameliorate land ownership pattern of the economy. Basically landlessness often materializes the manifestation of poverty, indebtedness and powerlessness of the majority of the rural households. The causes of landlessness and near landlessness are numerous including dearth of land, rapid population growth, low productivity in agriculture, lack of effective government policies, colonial legacies etc. Due to these circumstances, land-oriented poverty and rural to urban migration without any expansion in the housing and utility services lead to the expansion of slump with all affiliated social problems. On the other hand, it has been found that landlessness diminishes the rate of land-fragmentation, which facilitates automation in production process through both extensive and intensive directions. Therefore, this research has uncovered that landlessness has a significant level of positive impacts on economic development through facilitating modern technology in primary sector. For social welfare, the policymakers can rehabilitate the landless people through creating income generating activities. In this regard, setting up agro based industries as well as promoting employment in non agricultural sector is a must for achieving potential economic growth. However, this research also identified that landlessness causes to boom up the service sector. It has been happened due to the radical emergence of non-government organizations that generated income-oriented activities in the rural areas through social movement.

Telecommunication and more specially mobile phones have the potential to provide solution to the existing information asymmetry in various lagging sectors like Agriculture. India’s agricultural sector suffers from low growth rates and low productivity. Issues in access to information is a week point at every stage of the agrisupply chain. For small farmers base economy like India, access to information can possible enable better incomes and productivity to the farmers. This paper through focus group discussions and in-depth interview with farmers in villages of India, has tried to find answers to the use and impact of mobile and mobile enabled services on agricultural productivity. The answers to these questions are of relevance to develop better policy environment conducive for the small and medium farmers and has implications for mobile operators, for information service providers, and for policy-makers. The results show that although, mobiles can act as catalyst to improving productivity and rural incomes, the quality of the information, the timeliness of the information and trustworthiness of the information are the three important aspects that has to be delivered to the farmers, to meet there needs and expectations. There exist critical binding constraints that restricts the ability of the farming community to realise gains at full potential and this is more for the small than to large farmers.

For several decades, various sub-Saharan Africa governments have been proactive in revamping their agricultural extension service delivery systems through establishment and revisions of their agricultural extension policies. Despite the existence and implementation of these policies, productivity in small holder farms in these countries is still low several years later. The need to enhance agricultural production is still cited as a challenge, with low adoption of improved technologies being found as the major contributing factor. This study used a qualitative approach to examine farmers’ perceptions regarding the role of extension agents in the diffusion of innovations and its implications on sustainable agricultural development in Malawi and Kenya. Increased focus on using agricultural extension as an improved technology dissemination tool was found to be one of the factors contributing to low agricultural productivity. This among others was as result of failure by extension to tap valuable information, useful knowledge, skills and resources which was found to be available among farmers in both countries. The findings imply farmers no longer value their local knowledge and are uncomfortable sharing it amongst themselves. However, addressing the challenge of low agricultural productivity (heavily impacted by climate change) in these countries requires a shift in approach when delivering agricultural extension services. These changes include the use of interactive Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to solicit feedback and input from farmers and to enhance the two-way communication process. Keywords: diffusion of innovations; extension education; improved technologies; policy

Mountain regions are among the most vulnerable areas with regard to global environmental changes. In the Bolivian Andes, for example, environmental risks, such as those related to climate change, are numerous and often closely intertwined with social risks. Rural households are therefore characterized by high mobility, which is a traditional strategy of risk management. Nowadays, most rural households are involved in multi-residency or circular migratory movements at a regional, national, and international scale. Taking the case of two rural areas close to the city of La Paz, we analyzed migration patterns and drivers behind migrant household decisions in the Bolivian Andes. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with selected respondents from 68 households. The drivers for migration were categorized, their relative importance was calculated, and generalized linear mixed models were applied for statistical analyses. Our results underline that migration is a traditional peasant household strategy to increase income and manage livelihood risks under rising economic pressures, scarcity of land, insufficient local off-farm work opportunities, and low agricultural productivity. Migration predominantly occurs to nearby urban areas located in the same region. Climatic variability and water scarcity, which have increased through climate change, play crucial roles as additional stressors for agricultural production. Our results suggest that environmental factors do not drive migration independently, but are rather combined with socio-economic factors. There is a need for more research on the links between environmental changes driven by climate change and other factors and their effects on migration dynamics and rural development in the Bolivian Andes and adjacent areas.

Ethiopia experienced a severe food crisis and famine during 1983-85. In the peak famine year about 8 minion people were affected by famine in different parts of the country, and estimates indicate that about 1 minion people perished owing to the famine and related problems. Consequently, a number of causative factors have been proposed by different authors. Various hypotheses have been advanced to explain what went wrong in Ethiopia during the mid 1980s to result in such a devastating famine. The general view is that the food availability decline (FAD) and food entitlement famine (FEF) are the two altinative causes of the mid 1980s famine. To cast light on this baffling debate on the mid 1980s famine causation in Ethiopia, this thesis surveyed the FAD and FEF situations during the mid 1980s in Ethiopia, and the factors that led up to them. Thus, in the light of the hypotheses, this thesis considers the relative importance of the two in contributing to the mid 1980s famine. The two hypotheses are reviewed and evaluated critically. The FAD and FEF themselves result from different long-term and short-term factors by taking into account alternative approaches of assessment. This thesis presents the results of both the secondary and primary data to venture into such factors. Food production declined by 37 percent at the national level in the peak famine year of 1984.85 compared with 1982. 3. Production declined in many regions. For the Wollo region, the decline was 75 percent. These figures hint the presence of the FAD at both the national and regional levels. The more pronounced regional decline suggests the regional concentration of famine in the mid 1980s in Ethiopia. The FAD can be attributed to different long-term and short-term factors. But the underlying irony is that food production decline during the period was precipitated by recurrent significant rain failures (droughts) that affected the dominant rainfed agricultural production areas in the country. Structural problems and the problems of land and environmental degradation in the famine-prone northern highlands also reflected their influence on the long-term vulnerability to shocks. The civil war in the north seriously affected food production and distribution, particularly in those areas under rebel control. The policy apects were not favourable either. In Ethiopia the agricultural policy in the 1970s and 1980s discriminated against the dominated private peasant farms. This neglect of a dominant agricultural group contributed to the low agricultural production and productivity. The private farmers were also forced to deliver foodgrains oil a quota basis at the Government fixed low prices, whilst buying the few inputs available at relatively high prices. This worsened the private farmers terms of trade and led to a disincentive.The FEF causation aspect is discussed by focusing on the Government’s foodgrains movement and trade restriction policy, market integration, the foosgrain price trends during the famine years, and the relative price of foosgrain and other disposable assets. The empirical findings indicate that these factors were not favourable, and adversely affected the food grain supply reaching certain areas. These factors also significant contributed to eroding the purchasing power of the market dependent during the famine years and hence adversely affected the people’s food entitlement. A comparison is made between the FAD and the FEF in one of the severely affected Wollo region and its two districts. The finding is that the rate of the FEF was greater than then FAD for the peak famine year of 1984/85. But the gap between the two was not significant, indicating that the importance of both the FAD and FEF explaining Ethiopia’s famine in the mid 1980s. The presence of a structured food deficit within certain regions during the national normal production level rendered existing food production and distribution policies inadequate. The excess mortality not only casts on the success and effectiveness of public response to the famine of the mid 1980s in Ethiopia, but also increases the uncertainty about their long-term famine mitigation capabilities. The empirical results indicated that both the household coping strategies the public responses failed to prevent the food shortages from developing into famine. The political will, responsibility and prioritisation also showed food security and famine mitigation are considered at the national, region, and household levels. These scenarios basically embrace: (a) how to increase the meagre agricultural surplus at both the national and local level, and (b) how the vulnerable can get a sustainable access to any available food, when trapped in an endemic situation of insecure food supplies caused by a low resource based and the natural (environmental) constraints. Thus, we present the impact of and implication of the FAD and FEF ( and factors behind them) on the long-term tendencies in achieving the securities of food supplies.

The inter-linkages amongst agricultural productivity, rural poverty and nutritional security have been analysed based on a study of Bagalkot district of Karnataka state using primary data for the agricultural year 2005-06 obtained from 120 farm households. The data have been processed using ratios, frequencies, percentages, regression analysis and probit model. Agricultural productivity has negatively and significantly influenced rural poverty at the farm level. Low agricultural productivity is the root cause of rural poverty. Household size and number of dependents therein have positively influenced rural poverty. Optimization of household size or increase in the number of earning members of the household would reduce poverty. Nutritional security is greatly influenced by the level of rural poverty. To upgrade the nutritional status of households, the study has suggested that effective poverty alleviation programmes aimed at enhancing agricultural productivity through transfer of productive assets instead of consumer goods to the poor, should be launched and effectively monitored. Agricultural credit being an important aspect of productivity, appropriate steps should be taken to increase the access of rural households to financial institutions.

The Yangtze River Basin (YRB) has been recognized as one of the key strategic development regions in China. Agriculture p52roduction systems in the YRB have contributed considerably to China’s goal of food security. Realizing Agriculture Green Development (AGD) means agriculture production systems with high productivity, high resource use efficiency and low environmental costs. However, challenges and barriers still exist for realizing AGD in the YRB. Here, we summarize four main challenges for AGD in the YRB, and identify two approaches (top-down and bottom-up) including main strategies needed to achieve AGD. The four challenges include, but are not limited to, (1) low agricultural productivity and nutrient use efficiencies, (2) an uneven agricultural production structure, (3) rapid urbanization, and (4) uncoordinated targets for environmental protection and food production. We conclude that both top-down and bottom-up approaches are needed to deliver AGD in the YRB. Top-down approaches are mainly operated by government and underpinned by research, which uses spatial planning to promote the balance between agricultural production and the ecological environment, and to optimize the proportions of cereal and cash crop production with monogastric and ruminant animal production. The bottom-up approach needs strategies to close the yield gap of various cropping and livestock systems, improve resource use efficiencies to control environmental impacts. Furthermore, training and education are needed to increase awarenessand improve skills for farmers and advisers. Our review can serve as example for other global regions that are in transition from unsustainable agriculture production towards sustainable withclean environment and healthy economies.