Why Do People Stay Poor?

There are two broad views as to why people stay poor. One emphasizes differences in fundamentals, such as ability, talent, or motivation. The other, the poverty traps view, emphasizes differences in opportunities which stem from access to wealth. To test between these two views, we exploit a large-scale, randomized asset transfer and an 11-year panel of 6,000 households who begin in extreme poverty. The setting is rural Bangladesh and the assets are cows. The data supports the poverty traps view—we identify a threshold level of initial assets above which households accumulate assets, take on better occupations (from casual labor in agriculture or domestic services to running small livestock businesses), and grow out of poverty. The reverse happens for those below the threshold. Structural estimation of an occupational choice model reveals that almost all beneficiaries are misallocated in the work they do at baseline and that the gains arising from eliminating misallocation would far exceed the program costs. Our findings imply that large transfers which create better jobs for the poor are an effective means of getting people out of poverty traps and reducing global poverty.

Perceptions, Vulnerability and Adaptation Strategies for Mitigating Climate Change Effects among Small Livestock Herders in Punjab, Pakistan

Pakistan is an agrarian nation that is among the most vulnerable countries to climatic variations. Around 20% of its GDP is produced by agriculture, and livestock-related production contributes more than half of this value. However, few empirical studies have been conducted to determine the vulnerability and knowledge of livestock herders, and particularly the smaller herders. Comprehending individual perceptions of and vulnerabilities to climate change (CC) will enable effective formulation of CC mitigation strategies. This study intended to explore individual perceptions of and vulnerabilities to CC based on a primary dataset of 405 small livestock herders from three agro-ecological zones of Punjab. The results showed that livestock herders’ perceptions about temperature and rainfall variations/patterns coincide with the meteorological information of the study locations. The vulnerability indicators show that Dera Ghazi Khan district is more vulnerable than the other two zones because of high exposure and sensitivity to CC, and lower adaptive capacity. However, all zones experience regular livelihood risks due to livestock diseases and deaths resulting from extreme climatic conditions, lower economic status, and constrained institutional and human resource capabilities, thus leading to increased vulnerability. The results indicate that low-cost local approaches are needed, such as provision of improved veterinary services, increased availability of basic equipment, small-scale infrastructure projects, and reinforcement of informal social safety nets. These measures would support cost-effective and sustainable decisions to enable subsistence livestock herders to adopt climate smart practices.

A New Paradigm in the Delivery of Modernizing Agricultural Technologies across Africa

This Chapter describes the approach and impacts of the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) Program. TAAT is an operational framework based upon collaboration between the African Development Bank, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, and many other partners. This Program is designed to deliver modernizing agricultural technologies as a means of achieving food and nutritional security, and to boost employment and agricultural exports across Africa. TAAT consists of nine Commodity Compacts that have assembled technology toolkits for use in development programs and six specialized Enablers that help them to do so. These commodities are rice, maize, wheat, sorghum, millet, cassava, sweet potato, common beans, fish, and small livestock. The Enablers provide policy support, youth empowerment, capacity development, irrigation and soil fertility expertise, and control of invasive pests. Together these Compacts and Enablers design and conduct collaborative agricultural development projects in partnership with national counterparts. To date, TAAT has staged 88 interventions in 31 African countries, including the incorporation of customized technology toolkits within country loan projects of major development banks. Over three years, these efforts have reached about 10.6 million adopter households and increased food supply by 12 million tons worth over US $763 million, resulting in substantial improvements in smallholder farmer’s food supply (0.75 MT yr.−1) or income ($128 yr.−1). Environmental gains in terms of carbon offset average 0.74 MT CO2e yr.−1 per adopter household, an outcome indicative of positive combined rural development and climate actions. This Chapter describes how these technology toolkits are designed, deployed and evaluated, and how TAAT is becoming a leading mechanism for agricultural innovation delivery across Africa. This evaluation is limited to eight critical field crops and does not consider animal enterprises or the strategic roles of TAAT Enablers, two other important activities within the larger Program.

Study of odor simulation and proposed odor isolation distance for some main pollutants (H2S, NH3, CH3SH ) for livestock activities: Applied in Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) is the largest city in Vietnam, with the highest economic growth rate and the most populous density in the country. By the year 2019, HCMC currently has 8.99 million people with 24 districts. Ho Chi Minh city has robust industrial and service development; therefore, HCMC focuses on developing large-scale livestock facilities with a large number of pigs and limiting small livestock facilities. According to statistic data, HCMC has a total of 290.152 pigs in 2018. These livestock facilities are mainly built in Cu Chi, Hoc Mon, Binh Chanh, Can Gio, and Nha Be districts. These livestock facilities in HCMC have inefficient waste treatment systems located interleaved with residential areas. So that, environmental issues are also a big challenge for the city's government because of the great influence of odor on the surrounding environment causing by the wind direction. The main purposes of this study are (i) calculation of odor emissions from livestock facilities, (ii) simulation of the odor from livestock facilities , and (iii) development of the safe distance of odor for livestock facilities in HCMC. The study results show that, the concertrations from livestock facilitties with capacity from from 50 to 200 pigs and 200 to 500 pigs are lower than QCVN 06:2009/BTNMT. The minimum distance for the livestock facility with capacity from over 500 to 1,000 pigs and over 1,000 pigs to the residential area are 230m and 650m, respectively. The procedure for calculating the odor isolation distance developing in this study could apply for other livestock facilities in other provinces, cities.

Justification of resource-own technologies and technical equipment for preparing fodder on small livestock farms

In the current situation, if the characteristic feature of livestock development is, on the one hand, related to the diversification of agriculture, on the other hand it is also associated with the production of various forms of ownership in the country, large farms and small private farms. At present, interrelated financial, technological, social and natural factors remain in our country as factors limiting the development of small-scale livestock farms. However, it should be noted that despite the lack of opportunities and material and technical support, small farms, peasant farmers and households currently produce more than 80% of meat and milk in our country.

Beauty or beast? Farmers’ dualistic views and the influence of aesthetic appreciation on tolerance towards black-backed jackal and caracal

Various species of wild, adaptable, medium-sized carnivores occur outside of protected areas, often coming into contact with people and their domestic animals. Negative human-carnivore interactions can lead to antagonistic attitudes and behavior directed at such species. In the South African Karoo, a semi-arid rangeland, the predation of small-livestock by mesopredators is common and farmers typically use a combination of non-lethal and lethal methods to try and prevent livestock losses. We used ethnographic field observations and semi-structured interviews as part of a mixed methods approach, including the quantitative and qualitative analysis of farmers’ narratives to illustrate the nuanced ways in which sheep farmers relate to the two mesopredators that consume the most livestock on their farms; black-backed jackal and caracal. Overall, farmers attributed negative characteristics to jackal and caracal but farmers’ narratives provided evidence of complex perceptions in that the animals were admired as well as disliked. Both species were seen as charismatic due to traits such as their physical appearance, their “cunning” nature and their remarkable adaptability to human activities, including lethal control. Aesthetic appreciation was an important predictor of tolerance towards both species whereas negative attitudes were associated with the perception that mesopredators should only occur within protected areas. Attitudes towards jackals also appeared to have been affected by cultural representations of them as “thieves”. We showed that perceiving mesopredators as beautiful increased the average marginal probability of a farmer tolerating them, and that this strong relationship held when controlling for other covariates such as livestock predation. We advocate the importance of understanding the cultural and aesthetic aspects of predators and considering existing positive dimensions of human-wildlife relationships that may encourage increased farmers’ tolerance, which might promote coexistence.

ALTERNATIF SKENARIO PEMANFAATAN AIR EMBUNG NELAS BERDASARKAN KARAKTERISTIK KETERSEDIAANNYA

East Nusa Tenggara Province is a province that has many embungs. Embung Nelas, in Lamaknen District, Belu Regencyis planned to meet the water demand of the population and cattle in Makir & Lamaksenulu Village as well as field water demand in Makir Village. Embung Nelas is design by using dependable flow Q 80%. From the calculation, Embung Nelas can meet the water demand in Makir and Lamaksenulu villages until 2040 for a population of 5888 people, 4029 large cattle, 1739 small livestock and 3277 chicken, as well as the irrigation water demand of 23 hectares the Makir Village Considering that the rainy conditions are not the same every year, a water use scenario is made based on the water conditions. There are 4 discharge conditions, dry discharge (Q97.3%), low discharge (Q 80%), normal water discharge (50.7%) and sufficient water discharge (26%). The simulation results in the other 3 scenarios, were obtained for the dry discharge of Embung Nelas in 2040 which was only able to irrigate 76% of raw water and cattle, in normal water conditions it could irrigate 6.6 Ha more fields and in sufficient water it could irrigate 12.9 Ha more fields. Keywords: Embung, Dependable flow, Simulation, Scenario

PPRV-induced novel miR-3 contributes to inhibit type I IFN production by targeting IRAK1

Peste des petits ruminants virus (PPRV) is an important pathogen that seriously influences the productivity of small ruminants worldwide. PPRV has evolved several mechanisms to evade IFN-I responses. We report that a novel microRNA in goat PBMCs, novel miR-3, was upregulated by PPRV to facilitate virus infection. Furthermore, PPRV V protein alone was sufficient to induce novel miR-3 expression, and NF-κB and p38 pathway may involved in the induction of novel miR-3 during PPRV infection. Importantly, we demonstrated that novel miR-3 was a potent negative regulator of IFN-α production by targeting IRAK1, which resulted in the enhancement of PPRV infection. In addition, we found that PPRV infection can activated ISGs through IFN independent and IRF3 dependent pathway. Moreover, our data revealed that novel miR-3 mediated regulation of IFN-α production may involve in the differential susceptibility between goat and sheep to PPRV. Taken together, our findings identified a new strategy taken by PPRV to escape IFN-I-mediated antiviral immune responses by engaging cellular microRNA and, thus, improve our understanding of its pathogenesis. IMPORTANCE: Peste des petits ruminants virus (PPRV) induce in the hosts a transient but severe immunosuppression, which threatens both small livestock and endangered susceptible wildlife populations in many countries. Despite extensive research has been explored, the mechanism underlying PPRV immune system evasion remains elusive. Our data provided the first direct evidence that novel microRNA-3 (novel miR-3) feedback inhibits type I IFN signaling when goat PBMCs are infected with PPRV vaccine strain N75/1, thus promoting the infection. In this study, the target of novel miR-3, IRAK1, which are important for PPRV-induced type I IFN production, have also been found. Moreover, we identified NF-κB and p38 pathways may involve in novel miR-3 induction in response to PPRV infection. Taken together, our research has provided new insight into understanding the effects of miRNA on host-virus interactions, and revealed a potential therapeutic target for antiviral intervention.