The Role of Agricultural Institutions in Providing Support Towards Sustainable Rural Development in South Pacific Island Countries

This paper examines the agricultural training in higher education institutions and tertiary colleges, their pre-eminent role and how best they can contribute to alleviate poverty in rural communities in Fiji and other South Pacific island countries. These institutions provide support through training farmers (vocational and adult education) and/or extension officers and providing researchers. Unfortunately, agricultural training institutions are not adapting to the rapid changing times early enough and have more or less maintained the traditional way of training. There is a need for agricultural institutions to amend their programs to facilitate the new emerging areas, together with new learning and teaching frameworks, establish new partnerships with the private sector in addition to expanding their representation in governance in addition to holding continuous dialogue with policymakers. Further, these institutions can potentially showcase local customs and knowledge, mirroring the regional culture, and ethical customs of the Pacific island community, as well as global movements and development forces. In reinforcing their title role as contributors to a culture of education and rural agricultural development, we suggest that agricultural institutions engage more directly and more effectively in partnerships and dialogue with other local agricultural stakeholders and their surrounding rural communities in Fiji and other Pacific island countries.

Response of Rice Harvest Index to Different Water and Nitrogen Management Modes in the Black Soil Region of Northeast China

Understanding the methods leading to rice yield increase is vital for sustainable agricultural development. Improving the harvest index (HI) is an important way to increase rice yield. To explore the effects of different water and nitrogen management modes on the rice HI in the black soil region of Northeast China, a field experiment was conducted in 2019 (Y1) and 2020 (Y2). Two irrigation methods, conventional flooding irrigation (FI) and controlled irrigation (CI), were established in the experiment, and four nitrogen application levels (0 kg/ha, 85 kg/ha, 110 kg/ha, and 135 kg/ha) were set during the entire growth period, named N0, N1, N2, and N3. The dry matter weight and the rice yield at the maturity stage were determined, and the HI was then calculated. The results showed that different irrigation modes and nitrogen application levels had significant effects on the rice HI. Under different irrigation modes with the same nitrogen application level during the two years, the comparison regular of HI was consistent. In Y1 and Y2, the HI of FN0 was 3.36% and 5.02% higher than that of CN0 (p < 0.05), and the HI of CN1 was 0.31% and 2.43% higher than that of FN1 (p > 0.05). The HI under CI was significantly higher than that under FI under N2 and N3 (p < 0.05), the HI of CN2 was 4.21% and 4.97% higher than that of FN2, and the HI of FN3 was 13.12% and 20.34% higher than that of CN3. In addition, during the two-year experiment, the HI first increased and then decreased with an increase in the nitrogen application rate under FI and CI. Under the FI treatments, the HI of N1 was the highest, and that of N2 was the highest under the CI treatments. A variance analysis showed that the irrigation pattern and nitrogen application level had significant interactions on the rice HI (p < 0.01), and the appropriate water and N management mode could increase rice the HI by 26.89%. The experimental results showed that the HI of the 110 kg/ha nitrogen application rate under CI was the highest, reaching 0.574 and 0.572, respectively, in two years. This study provides a data reference and theoretical support for realizing water savings, nitrogen reduction, and sustainable agricultural development in the black soil region of Northeast China.

An approach for comparing agricultural development to societal visions

There is broad agreement that agriculture has to become more sustainable in order to provide enough affordable, healthy food at minimal environmental and social costs. But what is “more sustainable”? More often than not, different stakeholders have opposing opinions on what a more sustainable future should look like. This normative dimension is rarely explicitly addressed in sustainability assessments. In this study, we present an approach to assess the sustainability of agricultural development that explicitly accounts for the normative dimension by comparing observed development with various societal visions. We illustrate the approach by analyzing farm- and landscape-scale development as well as sustainability outcomes in a Swiss case study landscape. Observed changes were juxtaposed with desired changes by Avenir Suisse, a liberal think tank representing free-market interests; the Swiss Farmers Association, representing a conservative force; and Landwirtschaft mit Zukunft, an exponent of the Swiss agroecological movement. Overall, the observed developments aligned most closely with desired developments of the liberal think-tank (72%). Farmer interviews revealed that in the case study area farms increased in size (+ 57%) and became more specialized and more productive (+ 223%) over the past 20 years. In addition, interpretation of aerial photographs indicated that farming became more rationalized at the landscape level, with increasing field sizes (+ 34%) and removal of solitary field trees (− 18%). The case study example highlights the varying degrees to which current developments in agriculture align with societal visions. By using societal visions as benchmarks to track the progress of agricultural development, while explicitly addressing their narratives and respective systems of values and norms, this approach offers opportunities to inform also the wider public on the extent to which current developments are consistent with different visions. This could help identify mismatches between desired and actual development and pave the way for designing new policies.

Hitting the target and missing the point? On the risks of measuring women’s empowerment in agricultural development

There is a strong impetus in international agricultural development to close ‘gender gaps’ in agricultural productivity. The goal of empowering women is often framed as the solution to closing these gaps, stimulating the proliferation of new indicators and instruments for the targeting, measurement, and tracking of programmatic goals in research for agricultural development. Despite these advances, current measurements and indices remain too simplified in terms of unit and scope of analysis, as well as being fundamentally flawed in how they aim to capture the relevance of ‘gender’ in diverse local contexts. We propose that the impulse to apply exogenously defined and weakly validated ‘women’s empowerment’ measures to diverse local contexts risks prioritizing practical expedience over scientific accuracy and societal relevance. Furthermore, the application of such measures risks creating the impression that programmatic “gender targets” are being achieved, while simultaneously undermining substantive gender transformative goals. The authors conclude that a different methodological approach grounded in participatory and qualitative methods is needed to create more meaningful metrics for assessing progress towards women’s empowerment.

Shifts in Dry-Wet Climate Regions over China and Its Related Climate Factors between 1960–1989 and 1990–2019

The shifts in dry-wet climate regions are a natural response to climate change and have a profound impact on the regional agriculture and ecosystems. In this paper, we divided China into four dry-wet climate regions, i.e., arid, semi-arid, semi-humid, and humid regions, based on the humidity index (HI). A comparison of the two 30-year periods, i.e., 1960–1989 and 1990–2019, revealed that there was a shift in climate type in each dry-wet climate region, with six newly formed transitions, and the total area of the shifts to wetter conditions was more than two times larger than that of the shifts to drier conditions. Interestingly, the shifts to drier types were basically distributed in the monsoon region (east of 100∘ E) and especially concentrated in the North China Plain where agricultural development relies heavily on irrigation, which would increase the challenges in dealing with water shortage and food production security under a warming climate. The transitions to wetter types were mainly distributed in western China (west of 100∘ E), and most areas of the Junggar Basin have changed from arid to semi-arid region, which should benefit the local agricultural production and ecological environment to some extent. Based on a contribution analysis method, we further quantified the impacts of each climate factor on HI changes. Our results demonstrated that the dominant factor controlling HI changes in the six newly formed transition regions was P, followed by air temperature (Ta). In the non-transition zones of the arid and semi-arid regions, an increase in P dominated the increase of HI. However, in the non-transition zones of the semi-humid and humid region with a more humid background climate, the thermal factors (e.g., Ta, and net radiation (Rn)) contributed more than or equivalent to the contribution of P to HI change. These findings can provide scientific reference for water resources management and sustainable agricultural development in the context of climate change.