The Adoption of Bundled Sustainable Farm and Environmental Practices by Coffee Farmers in Southwest Ethiopia

Despite numerous efforts to introduce sustainable farm and environmental practices (SFEPs), such as pruning, soil erosion control, and water pollution abatement measures), their adoption by smallholder farmers is awfully low in Ethiopia. As a result, smallholder coffee farmers in the country remain in poverty traps even if there is room to enjoy coffee returns by doubling the yield by implementing sustainable practices. On the other hand, most previous coffee sustainability studies focus on the economic, livelihood, and poverty alleviation impact of private sustainability standard schemes. Despite the holistic advantages of the adoption of bundled SFEPs over individual adoption practices, it has been overlooked by earlier scholars in the country. In southwest Ethiopia, few farmers applied sustainable coffee farm practices (particularly pruning, stumping, the use of fertilizer, and mulching), and the yields gained by the farmers are quite low. Therefore, this study seeks to examine the factors affecting the adoption of bundled SFEPs and their intensity at the farm household level in southwest Ethiopia based on cross-sectional data obtained from 153 sampled coffee farm households for the 2019/2020 cropping season. The study results showed that the farmers’ adoption of different SFEPs depended on farm and management characteristics (total size of coffee holdings, multiple plots, remoteness of coffee farm, hired labor, and farming experience), socioeconomic variables (literacy, household size, and training), and Fairtrade coffee certification. Likewise, the intensity of SFEPs implementation is influenced by literacy and hired labor. Providing training and supplementing coffee farmers with farm equipment used for SFEPs, promoting small-scale mechanization options to address seasonal labor constraints, as well as strengthening Fairtrade organizations will facilitate the adoption of multiple SFEPs by coffee farmers in the country.

The Agonies of Covid 19 on Vegetable Farmers Along the White Volta River Basin in the Upper East Region of Ghana

The emergence of COVID 19 coupled with the enforcement of its safety protocols, coincided with the peak of harvesting and saleof perishable vegetables in the 2020 dry season farming period in the Upper East Region of Ghana.Using a qualitative approach, this study investigates the effects of the pandemic on vegetable farmers along the White Volta River Basin in the Region. The findings are that there weredisrupted supply and demand in the production-consumption chain resulting in low sales; a shortage of hired labor; and high stigmatization. Farmers had few alternatives other than to leave their food stuff to rot on the farm, use the produce to feed livestock, or smuggleof the produce across borders. The implications are that the COVID 19 pandemic compounded the susceptibility of small-scale vegetable farmers in the region. Their resilience and household income levels are adversely affected.

Legal status and labor legal entity in the science of labor law

The article is de-voted to the category of legal status and labor legal personality in the science of labor law, represents the ratio of the terms “person” and “personality”. Legal personality is a fundamental legal category because it determines the ability of a person to own the law. Legal personality is a developing legal property that reflects the specifics of social relations, the peculiarities of socio-economic formation, determine the place of the individual in society as a whole, and the field of a particular branch of law in particular. The realities of a market economy objectively necessitate a clear definition of legal personality as a fundamental legal category in the field of labor law to ensure the priority of contractual regulation of legal relations on the use of hired labor and, at the same time, effective implementation of the protective function of labor law. The author singles out three types of legal status: general (single) legal status for all citizens of our state; general status for all employees (employees); special or special status for certain categories of workers.Legal status is one of the central concepts of modern legal science, it was developed by many scholars of both the Soviet and modern periods. The author substantiates that the key elements of the legal status of the employee in labor relations are his legal personality. Particular attention is paid to the structure of the legal personality of the employee. It is proved that the legal capacity and capacity of the employee are the only indivisible phenomenon - legal personality. Substantiations are presented that the second necessary element of the legal personality of the employee is the ability to work. The current legal and legal status of the individual in almost the entire post-Soviet space is characterized by such features as extreme instability, weak legal protection, lack of reliable guarantee mechanisms, the inability of state authorities to effectively ensure the interests of citizens, their right to life, freedom, honor, dignity, property, security, equality, social justice and more.

Youth Participation in Agriculture and Poverty Reduction in Nigeria

With data from 683 systematically selected households, the study employed the Heckman two-stage model and the propensity score matching method (PSM) to examine the impact of youth participation in agriculture as a primary occupation on income and poverty in Nigeria. The results indicate that the gender of the youth and their determination to stay in agriculture significantly increases the probability that youth will participate in agriculture as a primary occupation. In addition, youth participation in agriculture as a main occupation contributes significantly to per capita household income and has the likelihood to reduce poverty by 17%. The daily wage rate of hired labor and the total farmland owned are the variables that positively explained the per capita income. Poverty was reduced by market access, having agriculture as a primary occupation, income from agricultural production, the total monetary value of all the household assets, determination to remain in agriculture, and the square of the respondents’ age. These results imply that creating employment for youth by engaging them in agriculture as a full-time occupation can increase their income and reduce poverty. However, the promotion of other secondary occupations, land, and market access is also vital.

Estimate the Impact of Payments for Environmental Services on Local Livelihoods and Environment: An Application of Propensity Scores

Payments for environmental services (PES) are usually considered as a useful tool to both protect the environment and generate multiple income streams for mountainous households who receive the payments, and thus, it has been widely implementing in many developing countries so far; however, the impact of it on local livelihoods and environment has been questioned. Therefore, the article aimed to evaluate the Vietnamese PES scheme’s effect on both environment and local livelihoods by surveying 282 households living in Quang Nam, Vietnam, and utilized the propensity score matching (PSM) technique to investigate the intervention policy’s influence. Furthermore, to evaluate PES’s effect on the environment, the article used Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) as a measure of the photosynthetic level of forest trees. The calculation of NDVI relied on satellite images downloaded from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer. The results indicated that (a) the natural forest status has been improved during PES implementation compared with that of pre-PES period regarding total forest areas, percentage of forest coverage, and vegetation cover; and (b) PES-participants have got a significantly lower income than nonparticipants regarding total annual income, agricultural income, and hired labor income. The limitation is that the impact of interventions on livelihoods and the environment is determined by the mutual combination of implemented programs rather than only the PES regime. So, we highly recommend that the future study separate the PES scheme’s actual impact to precisely evaluate the PES project’s effect on financial and environmental outcomes.

Forced Displacement and Agriculture: Implications for Host Communities

The disruptive effects of conflict and climate-related shocks and their tendencies to cause human population displacements are well documented in the literature. Given the growing number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) worldwide and the resulting population and service demand overload in host communities, it is important to understand the socioeconomic impacts. Because many host communities in developing countries are agriculture dependent, we investigate what happens to key agricultural sector outcomes in host communities when there is an influx of IDPs. For displacements caused by insurgency, communal clashes, and natural disasters, we estimate the impacts on agricultural outputs, employment, wages, and land use. We find that forced displacements generally result in reduced agricultural production due to lower land and labor productivity. Specifically, while the effect of insurgency-driven IDP influx is negative, it is positive for communal violence. Cassava, potatoes, and soya are particularly hard hit. Additionally, while insurgency-driven population influx reduces the agricultural wages of both males and females, it increases the reliance on male and female household labor but has no effect on hired labor. Finally, while insurgency-driven IDP influx does not affect land use and land market activities, it lowers the expected value of land and the number of farm plots harvested. We highlight the opportunity to leverage humanitarian assistance in building local agricultural capacity in host communities.

INTERNATIONAL LEGAL PROTECTION OF LABOR RIGHTS OF DOMESTIC WORKERS

The article addresses the analysis of international legal acts that regulate the labor relations of domestic workers, as well as related problems. The peculiarities of such regulation and its characteristic features are determined. Due to the fact that the problem of regulating the activities of employees who perform work on household services under the employment contract today is global in nature, it is relevant to many countries around the world concerning the basic standards and guarantees for those employed under the contract and engaged in housework. The means established by law to provide decent work conditions for domestic workers, as well as protection against discrimination, various forms of violence and interference in the privacy of domestic workers are determined. The methodological basis of the study were general and special methods of cognition. The dialectical method examines the problems of legal regulation of international norms of employment of domestic workers and their relation to a number of trends that have different effects on international labor law. Formal-logical and systematic methods were used in the study of the content of international legal acts governing the employment of domestic workers. The main result of the study is the regulation through international legal acts of relations concerned with the use of hired labor of domestic workers, improving its conditions, protection against discrimination and creating conditions for the free exercise of their ability to work within national laws as well as for comparative legal analysis and ways of existing systems improvement. Emphasis is also placed on increasing the role and need for recognition of legal mechanisms for the protection of labor rights of domestic workers, improvement of international legal norms aiming at their protection.

Human and robot: technologization vs. humanization of noonomy

The role of a man at various stages of the formation and development of capitalism is considered. It is shown how hired labor gradually turned from a factor of production into human capital and became a decisive element in the creation of new digital technologies. At the same time, there has been a significant change in the role and place of man in the economy and society. Noonomics can no longer rely solely on the private interest of capital, because technological fetishism has begun to threaten the very existence of a man. Artificial intelligence as a robot and in other forms claims to replace a man in many areas. Only a man himself is capable of transforming technologization into a modern support of humanization under the conditions of noonomics.

Rationale for the Formation of a New Work Ethic through the Prism of Post-Operaism Philosophy and the Concept of a “Projective City”

The article attempts to analyze the formation of a new work ethic in modern society through the prism of the post-operaist concept and the theory of "projective city". It is demonstrated that labor has undergone significant changes in comparison with the labor of the Fordist stage, as a consequence of which a new justification of justice and individual good was required, which would promote involvement in project labor. Drawing on the concept of post-Fordist labor, the emergence of such a rationale is examined. The article reveals the key points of post-Fordist theory that deal with the transformation of labor. conditions of postFordism. It is shown that, on the one hand, labor becomes immaterial, biopolitical, affective, on the other hand, such features contribute to the formation of new practices of ethical justification of labor. It is demonstrated that the organization of "immaterial labor" or biopolitical labor is formed as a network. At the same time, it is the project that becomes the value model that allows the formation of a new work ethic. Thus, the destruction of hierarchical structures leads to the formation of a network mode of labor organization, which does not allow an answer to the question of the fair distribution of material and symbolic goods. Then project work imposes a certain framework that allows us to restore the procedure of fair evaluation. Through the concept of "projective city" by L. Boltanski and E. Chiapello the logic of development of justification of individual benefits for a person included in hired labor is comprehended. It is revealed that justification is built through increasing the opportunities for selfrealization and the expansion of personal freedom. The article shows that the reliance on the concept of "projective city" allows to consider the contradictions associated with the formation of new ethical justifications and value structures. When the apparatus of argumentation of labor involvement in the "projective city" works with the principle of justice and individual good, the worker is offered the opportunity for self-realization and development of his own potential through practices of self-control. The conclusion is that the value changes described above are indicative of the emergence of a new ethic of labor relations.