Technical efficiency of hybrid maize production in eastern terai of Nepal: A stochastic frontier approach

Maize is the second most important crop after rice in terms of area and production in Nepal. This article analyzes the technical efficiency and its determinants of hybrid maize production in eastern Nepal. Using a randomly selected data from 98 farmers (41 from Morang and 57 from Sunsari) in eastern Nepal, the study employed a stochastic frontier production model to find the production elasticity coefficients of inputs, determinants of efficiency and technical efficiency of hybrid maize farmers. The results showed that maize production responds positively to increase in amount of urea, DAP and the area planted, where as it is negative to seed quantity. The study indicate that farmers are not technically efficient with a mean technical efficiency 79 %. Socioeconomic variable age had a negative and significant while the household size had a positive and significant related to maize output. The younger farmers were observed more technically efficient than older farmers. Larger the members in the household higher the maize production. It is recommended that farmers should increase their fertilizer dose and farm size while they should decrease their seed rate for efficient production.

Application of self organizing map, SAHN clustering and spatial analysis on the diversity of plant resource in homegardens: Case study in Perak, Malaysia

Homegardens are defined as less complex agroforests which look like and function as natural forest ecosystems but are integrated into agricultural management systems located around houses. Study on the factor affecting the diversity of plant resource in homegardens is paramount important to improve productivity and sustainability. Previous studies related to homegradens analysis are conducted using ordination techniques (e.g. Principal Component Analysis, Correspondence Analysis). In this study, we introduced the application of Self-Organizing Map (SOM) a type of Artificial neural networks (ANNs) to analyze the effects of socioeconomic variable and homegardens characteristic toward diversity of plant resource and to investigate the spatial configuration occurring within homegardens. The inter-relationships among the socioeconomic variable and homegardens characteristic were extracted and interpreted using the pattern analysis visualized in component planes. Sequential agglomerative hierarchical non-overlapping (SAHN) clustering technique was also used to verify results obtained from SOM by using the unweighted pair grouping method with arithmetic-mean (UPGMA). Ten homegardens were identified from SOM U-Matrix and each of the homegardens was investigated for their horizontal and vertical profile. Inspection of SOM indicates that the region with high d-values for size of homegardens coincides with those of food, ornamental, and medicinal plants. Region of high d-value in Shannon index coincides with region of high d-value in Evenness index. Region of low d-value in income coincides with high d-values in both the Shannon and Evenness indices. Region of high d-value in age of household also coincides with high d-values in both the Shannon and Evenness indices. Combination of SOM, SAHN and spatial analysis techniques has a potential to analyst and monitor not only the factors affecting homegardens biodiversity but also their development and improvement which to our best knowledge has yet been reported in literature.

Application of self organizing map, SAHN clustering and spatial analysis on the diversity of plant resource in homegardens: Case study in Perak, Malaysia

Homegardens are defined as less complex agroforests which look like and function as natural forest ecosystems but are integrated into agricultural management systems located around houses. Study on the factor affecting the diversity of plant resource in homegardens is paramount important to improve productivity and sustainability. Previous studies related to homegradens analysis are conducted using ordination techniques (e.g. Principal Component Analysis, Correspondence Analysis). In this study, we introduced the application of Self-Organizing Map (SOM) a type of Artificial neural networks (ANNs) to analyze the effects of socioeconomic variable and homegardens characteristic toward diversity of plant resource and to investigate the spatial configuration occurring within homegardens. The inter-relationships among the socioeconomic variable and homegardens characteristic were extracted and interpreted using the pattern analysis visualized in component planes. Sequential agglomerative hierarchical non-overlapping (SAHN) clustering technique was also used to verify results obtained from SOM by using the unweighted pair grouping method with arithmetic-mean (UPGMA). Ten homegardens were identified from SOM U-Matrix and each of the homegardens was investigated for their horizontal and vertical profile. Inspection of SOM indicates that the region with high d-values for size of homegardens coincides with those of food, ornamental, and medicinal plants. Region of high d-value in Shannon index coincides with region of high d-value in Evenness index. Region of low d-value in income coincides with high d-values in both the Shannon and Evenness indices. Region of high d-value in age of household also coincides with high d-values in both the Shannon and Evenness indices. Combination of SOM, SAHN and spatial analysis techniques has a potential to analyst and monitor not only the factors affecting homegardens biodiversity but also their development and improvement which to our best knowledge has yet been reported in literature.

The Election of Blacks to City Councils: Clarifying the Impact of Electoral Arrangements on the Seats/Population Relationship

The notion that at-large elections for city council seats are discriminatory toward blacks has recently been attacked as empirically invalid. Recent studies have reached conflicting conclusions as to whether electoral arrangements or socioeconomic factors are the major influence on how proportionately blacks are represented. This article addresses this issue, using a regression-based analysis in which proportionality is treated as a relationship across cities with electoral structure as a specifying variable. Socioeconomic variables found to be important in other studies are included. The results support the traditional notion and suggest that the electoral structure begins to have a discernible impact on the level of black representation once the black population reaches 10 percent of the total municipal population. While one socioeconomic variable, the relative income of the city's black population, is found to affect the election of blacks, its impact is greater than that of the electoral structure only when the black population is less than 15 percent.