BEHIND TRADE BALANCE SURPLUS IN KALIMANTAN BARAT AMIDST COVID-19 PANDEMIC

ABSTRACTThis study aims to determine general exports/imports structure, find the commodities and their salient characteristics, and measure changes in primary commodities price during the pandemic in Kalimantan Barat. The data used is Kalimantan Barat's export and import from Statistics Indonesia over January 2019 - June 2021 through descriptive analysis method and Fisher Index unit value. The results explain that three primary export commodities are bauxite, palm oil, and rubber. Bauxite and natural rubber were shocked by the pandemic, but palm oil can still hold. The government encourages downstream activities for bauxite and palm oil to produce value-added products, while rubber pays more attention to upstream quality. The contribution of exports is relatively significant to affect economic growth with the downstream process performed by the government; tremendous added value can be seen in palm oil commodities. Imports are beneficial because they add intermediate materials to support industrial processes. The recommendation is that local governments continue intensive monitoring and evaluation of smelter construction even during the Covid-19 pandemic, concentrate on the grade of palm oil downstream for its sustainability, and improve rubber trading system and capacity building for rubber extension officers to provide adequate guidance to rubber farmers.JEL : F10, F19, F40. Keywords: trade balance, export, fisher index, downstream, descriptive statistics, covid-19. ABSTRAKPenelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui gambaran umum struktur ekspor/impor; mengetahui komoditas utama dan karakteristik yang menonjol; serta mengukur perubahan harga komoditas utama selama pandemi di Kalimantan Barat. Data yang digunakan adalah data ekspor dan impor Kalimantan Barat yang dikumpulkan oleh Badan Pusat Statistik selama periode Januari 2019 - Juli 2021 dengan analisis deskriptif dan Indeks Fisher. Hasil penelitian menjelaskan bahwa neraca perdagangan masih didominasi oleh aktivitas ekspor. Tiga komoditas ekspor utama adalah bauksit, minyak sawit dan karet. Pemerintah mendorong kegiatan hilirisasi pada komoditas bauksit dan kelapa sawit untuk menghasilkan produk bernilai tambah, sementara komoditas karet justru lebih memperhatikan kualitas hulu. Kontribusi ekspor sangat mempengaruhi pertumbuhan ekonomi dengan proses hilirisasi yang dilakukan oleh pemerintah, nilai tambah yang sangat besar terlihat pada komoditas minyak sawit. Aktivitas impor juga sangat menunjang perekonomian, selama impor yang dimanfaatkan adalah bahan baku penolong untuk mendukung proses industri. Oleh karena itu disarankan untuk pemerintah daerah agar tetap melakukan pengawasan dan evaluasi secara intensif berkala terhadap progres pembangunan smelter meskipun di masa pandemi Covid-19, memperhatikan kualitas produk hilir minyak sawit agar dapat terus berkelanjutan, memperbaiki tata niaga karet serta meningkatkan kualitas penyuluh karet agar tepat sasaran dalam melakukan pembinaan kepada petani karet.

Seeing no net loss: Making nature offset-able

Policies for biodiversity no net loss and net gain underwrite narratives for green growth through advancing reparative logics to ongoing habitat impacts. By enabling offsetting practices that risk accommodating rather than averting land change developments, net principles are said to resemble modes of ‘accumulation by environmental restoration’. Biodiversity net principles are frequently depicted visually as a diagram of the mitigation hierarchy for communicational ease and have proliferated over recent decades despite little evidence for their ecological effectiveness. This paper combines economic sociology, visual media analysis of the net diagram and political ecology to account for the stabilisation of net principles in policy frameworks. It highlights the upstream imaginative work that this visual tool and its wider assemblages perform to support offsetting and habitat banking practices on the ground. The paper positions the NNL diagram as a conceptual and ideational technology. It traces the practices through which biodiversity is rationalised by the Cartesian coordinates of an XY schematic, and en-framed as a measure of numerical value on a vertical scale. The effect is to engender coherence to the idea of netting out differences in aggregate sums of biodiversity unit value, making nature conceptually offset-able. I develop this account through a history of the diagram as well as the broader processes that have shaped the policy and its arrival in English planning frameworks. Observers increasingly question how biodiversity offsetting and no net loss/ net gain have become so popular when their empirical foundations are so weak. This paper proposes that within the wider assemblages of actors, one answer is located in the potency and mobility of conceptual technologies such as diagrams of no net loss or net gain of biodiversity and the logic of balance-sheet accounting that is imbricated within the visual design.

Extreme Climate Shocks and Green Agricultural Development: Evidence from the 2008 Snow Disaster in China

Extreme climate shocks cause agricultural yield reductions and increase long-term climate risk, altering farmers’ long-term production decisions and affecting green agricultural development (GAD). We take the 2008 snow disaster in China as an extreme climate shock, calculate the GAD index by the entropy weighting method, and use the difference-in-difference method to study the extreme climate shock’s impact on GAD. The results show that: (1) Extreme climate shocks are detrimental to GAD, with the snow disaster decreasing China’s GAD level by 3.07%. (2) The impacts of extreme climate shocks are heterogeneous across climate and economic zones, with greater impact in humid and developed regions. (3) Extreme climate shocks affect GAD mainly by reducing farmers’ willingness to cultivate, and increasing energy consumption, fertilizer, and pesticide input. (4) Extreme climate shocks do not reduce agricultural yields in the long run. Still, they reduce the total value of agricultural production and decrease the quality of agricultural products expressed in terms of unit value. The findings of this study have policy implications for developing countries in coping with extreme climate shocks and promoting GAD.

The effect of additional turmeric flour in rations on the performance and egg quality of laying chicken isa brown strain age 70th weeks

This research aims to study and analyze the effect of adding turmeric flour (Curcuma domestica Val) in the rations on the performance of 70 weeks old Isa Brown strain of laying hens. The research method used in this study was an experimental method with a completely randomized design (CRD) step with five treatments and four replications. The number of chickens used was as many as 40 laying hens. The treatments given to the sample were P0 = feed without giving turmeric flour (control), P1 = feed with 0.3% turmeric flour, P2 = feed with 0.5% turmeric flour, P3 = feed with 0.7% turmeric flour and treatment P4 = feed by giving turmeric flour 0,9%. The results showed that giving turmeric flour in the rations of the Isa Brown strain of laying hens affected chicken performance and egg quality. This research concludes that giving turmeric flour a percentage of 0.7% in Isa Brown’s 70-week old laying hens is the best for ration consumption, Hen Day Production, egg weight, feed conversion, and egg quality: Haught Unit, yolk egg color, yolk egg index, grading egg and egg mass. Based on the haugh unit value, all eggs produced are still in the AA grade category

Effect of Egg-Coating Material Properties by Blending Cassava Starch with Methyl Celluloses and Waxes on Egg Quality

An egg-coating material was developed to extend the shelf-life and freshness of eggs by blending cassava starch (CS) with gelling agents and waxes. The effects of the properties of this egg coating on egg quality were investigated. Hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC), carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC), beeswax, and paraffin wax were used. CS blended with low-molecular-weight paraffin (Paraffin(L)) and CMC coating material displayed a tensile strength of 4 MPa, 34% elongation at break, 0.0039 g day−1 m−2 water vapor permeability, and a water contact angle of 89° at 3 min. Eggs coated with CS/CMC/Paraffin(L) solutions had a Haugh unit value of 72 (AA grade) and exhibited a weight loss of 2.4% in 4 weeks. CMC improved the compatibility of CS and Paraffin(L). This improvement and the hydrophobicity of Paraffin(L) provided suitable mechanical and water-resistance properties to the coating material that helped to maintain the quality of the coated AA-grade eggs with low weight loss for 4 weeks.

Ecosystems in Books: Evaluating the Inspirational Service of the Weser River in Germany

Attempts at assessing the monetary value of cultural ecosystem services has proven challenging due to their non-material and non-market characteristics. Innovative methods are needed to fill this methodological gap. In this paper, a novel approach is developed for evaluating the inspirational service, one type of valuable cultural service, of a specific ecosystem embodied in published books. Taking the Weser River in Germany as an example, a breadth of evidence found in 19 books shows the strong inspiration of the river to people living around it who create plenty of literary and artistic works that represent different faces of the river, such as novels, poems, folklore and paintings. Based on the prices of these books and the estimated number of persons who have read these books, the total value of the inspirational service provided by the Weser River is calculated as 168,499 € from 1980 to 2019, leading to the annual value of 5,616.63 €/year and the unit value of 0.24 €/ha/year with the water surface area of 23,123 ha and the period of 30 years. The advantages and shortcomings of this approach are discussed, and suggestions for the improvement and further research are made.

Performance Analysis of Coir and Coir Products Export from India

The present paper looks into the growth, instability, and sources of growth and instability of coir products export from India. Total coir export was found to have significant increase over the years. A drastic shift from finished products like handloom mats, coir yarn, and handloom mattings to products like coir fibre and coir pith in the composition of total coir products export from India was evident. Coir fibre showed the highest growth in export quantity, followed by coir curled. Export quantity was highest for coir other sorts, followed by power loom mats, power loom matting, and coir rugs. Change in mean quantity accounted for more than 80 percent changes in total coir export value. The change followed it in the mean unit value. Change in export quantity-export unit value covariance and change in mean export quantity were the major contributors to variance of export value.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF IMAGE PROCESSING METHOD ON THE AUTOMATIC READING SYSTEM OF THE GLASS THERMOMETER USING A DIGITAL CAMERA

The reading performance of an analog thermometer, Liquid in Glass Thermometer (LiGT), can be improved using a digital camera. The aim is to minimize the human error on the reading of LiGT and increase the accuracy of temperature measurement results. In order to achieve an accurate result, a robust image processing method is required in the measurement. In this work, the LiGT image generated using a digital camera is analyzed using the technique in HSV color space which consists of some image processing methods (e.g., thresholding, morphology filter). The type of LiGT used is the glass thermometer with the colored liquid. There are three main parts to this developed technique process, i.e., identifying the scale of LiGT to calculate the pixel per temperature unit value (ppt), segmentation of the liquid column, and calculate the temperature based on the ppt value. Through simulation with a synthetic image, we demonstrate that the developed technique in this work has successfully read (measured) the temperature value of the LiGT (having a scale unit of 1oC) with a measurement error of 0.04oC. In the experimental results, we also report the developed technique performed on a real image of LiGT.