Marketing: Farmers Promulgates Cash Crops, Itinerary to Support Their Livelihood and Enhance Their Living Standard

This paper is a briefing on the marketing and emergence of cash crops in the Indo-Bangladesh border, South West Khasi Hills District Meghalaya. It is solely aimed at understanding the inborn entrepreneurship skills of the particular sub-tribe of the Khasis called "War". They live in steep and sloppy mountains with moderate temperatures and receive sufficient precipitation throughout the year, which enables them to sustain their farming. Marketing is the heart core of every individual, regardless of any background and professionals. Marketing plays a very important role to the farmers, and everyone could enhance their standard of living due to the technique of commercialization. The Non-farmers can buy the food crops from the farmers through the role of business administration. It is pointless to have money without having a food supply. Thus, the commercialization of agricultural produce is highly required. Cash crops cultivation promotes economic growth and social growth; economically, people can generate income, put savings, and purchase physical capital. Socially they bridged with each other, helping one another, exchanging work, advising the younger ones, and imparting knowledge to one another, providing seeds and saplings to the have not. There is an evolution from practicing traditional crops, which can be consumed directly, to Cash crops, which need to be exported outside of the State through a marketing system with the intention to manufacture further for finished products.

Identity crises of ethnic groups in the colonial structure

In the late eighteenth century the colony moved on to rail, bridges, cash crops, and new laws to expand its structure. They developed cash crops centered on the Western Continuum Mountains and multiplied their business economy. Various ethnic groups were brought from the plains and settled in the mountains to create this structure. The land ethnics faced various hardships when they are adopting to the hill environment. Another dimension of the struggle faced by the tribes is to adopt and live in the mountains, by that situation British continued to conquer the south. These have been written as fictions by various writers. Here the study takes into account how the fictions of colonial-centric politics are recorded. After discussing these, theory of post colonialism forms this article.

The Development of Wheeled Transportation in Osun Division of Southwestern Nigeria, 1900-1960

Wheeled transportation constituted a single factor that facilitated the incorporation of various African communities into the Europeans’ mercantile economy. In fact, it was an innovation in Africa where people had relied on some navigable waterways in the coastal areas, park animals in the tsetse flies free areas like Northern Nigeria and trekking along foot paths where human head porterage predominated. However, with the advent of the wheeled transportation technology, economic horizon became broader as people were provided with more profitable endeavors to engage themselves with. This essay attempts to analyze the development of wheeled transportation as a factor that was fundamental to the new developments in colonial Osun Division of Southwestern Nigeria. This is in a view to examine the diplomacies that surrounded road and rail construction in the division, Western Regional Government initiatives and the implications of the transportation technology on the divisional economy. The study depends on oral data gathered through interviews and archival materials as well as literatures that were considered relevant to the subject matter. Considering the shift of attention to the production of cash crops which were more profitable compared to the food crops, availability of new jobs as a result of the movement of the trading firms into the division and massive emigration of able bodied men and women in search of 78 Abiodun Ajayi more profitable jobs. There is therefore no doubt that wheeled transportation technology occasioned a transformation that was unprecedented in the colonial economy of Osun Division.

Leveraging Parrondo's paradox for sustainable agriculture

Rotating crops is a sustainable agricultural technique that has been at the disposal of humanity since time immemorial. Switching between cover crops and cash crops allows the fields avoids overexploitation due to intensive farming. How often the respite is to be provided and what is the optimum cash cover rotation in terms of maximising yield schedule is a long-standing question tackled on multiple fronts by agricultural scientists, economists, biologists and computer scientists, to name a few. Dealing with the uncertainty in the field due to diseases, pests, droughts, floods, and impending effects of climate change, is important to consider when designing the cropping strategy. Analysing this time-tested technique of crop rotations with a new lens of Parrondo's paradox allows us to improve upon the technique and use it in synchronisation with the burning questions of contemporary times. By calculating optimum switching probabilities in a randomised cropping sequence, suggesting the optimum deterministic sequences and judicious use of fertilisers, we propose methods for improving crop yield and the eventual profit margins for farmers. Overall we also extend the domain of applicability of the seemingly unintuitive paradox by Parrondo, where two losing situations can be combined eventually into a winning scenario.

Coffee Leaf Rust (Hemileia vastatrix) in Kenya—A Review

Coffee is one of the most important cash crops and beverages in the world. Production of coffee is limited by many factors, which include insect pests and diseases, among others. One of the most devastating coffee diseases in many coffee-producing countries is Coffee Leaf Rust caused by the fungus Hemileia vastatrix. Kenya is a coffee-producing country and has conducted studies to understand and manage the disease. Management strategies for the disease include the development and use of fungicide spray programs, cultural control practices, breeding resistant coffee varieties, and biological control agents. This paper reviews the status of the disease and management options applied in Kenya.

Rotation/Succession Systems Affects Springtails (Hexapoda: Collembola) Abundance in Cash Crops Under No Tillage Cultivation

Acknowledging the bio indicator importance of springtails (Hexapoda: Collembola) for soil quality, this study aimed to determine the abundance of these arthropods in different systems of rotation/succession with commercial and cover crops, while also verifying the agricultural factor associated to these arthropods’ population. In the Instituto de Desenvolvimento Rural do Paraná (IAPAR-EMATER), during six years, areas with differing crops in rotation/succession adopting the no-tillage system were studied. For each system, chemical analyses of the soil were conducted and the number of captured springtails in pitfall traps was counted. The phytosanitary products applied during the evaluations and the quantity of vegetal cover remaining after harvest were considered as well. No difference was found between the rotation/succession systems in relation to chemical soil attributes, however the largest number of springtails was found in crop covers from corn, Brachiaria sp., and canola. These crop covers, including wheat, resulted in the highest straw dry mass. When removing the system in which the predecessor crop had the highest quantities of fungicide application, a positive correlation (r = 0.63; p < 0.01) was found, between springtail abundance and highest amount of straw after the harvest. If no fungicide applications occur, the crops with the largest amount of vegetal cover favor springtail populations.

Interaction of Inherited Microbiota from Cover Crops with Cash Crops

Cover crops (CC) provide important ecosystem services that are demanded to achieve more sustainable agrosystems. However, the legacy effects of CC on the microbial community structure and its interactions with the subsequent cash crops (CaC) are still poorly understood, especially when CC mixtures are involved. In this work, five CC (3 monocultures and 2 mixtures) were selected in an experiment under semi-controlled conditions to investigate if CC monocultures and mixtures differed in their effects on soil and crop variables and if the identity of the subsequent crop modulates these effects. The two most consumed crops worldwide, wheat and maize, were sown separately after CC. The legacy effects of CC on the studied microbial variables largely depended on the interaction with the CaC. The vetch and the barley-vetch mixture stood out by providing the microbial conditions that enhanced the absorption of macro- and micronutrients, to finally seek the highest wheat biomass (>80% more than the control). In maize, the effects of CC on soil microbiota were more limited. The soil microbial responses for CC mixtures were complex and contrasting. In wheat, the barley-vetch mixture behaved like barley monoculture, whereas in maize, this mixture behaved like vetch monoculture. In both CaC, the barley-melilotus mixture differed completely from its monocultures, mainly through changes in archaea, Glomeromycota, and F:B ratio. Therefore, it is necessary to deepen the knowledge on the CC-CaC-microbial interactions to select the CC that most enhance the sustainability and yield of each agrosystem.