Analysis of Socio-demographic Factors Influencing Households Participation in Sustainable Food Waste-management in Malaysia

Most local authorities in Malaysia spent as much as 60-70 percent of their annual budget to dispose food waste together with other municipal solid wastes to landfills. It is time for Malaysians to start reducing food waste through sustainable method, as it is becoming an uphill task to manage food wastes generated in Malaysia. When households reduce the amount of food waste generated in a sustainable way, it could help reduce cost, and other related bills for households, and as well in running their other daily activities. The main objective of this study is to assess how sociodemographic factors of households in Selangor and Terengganu influence their behaviour towards participation in sustainable food wastes management program. The study applied purposive nonrandom sampling consisting of 333 respondents, 257 were from Selangor and 76 from Terengganu. Primary data was collected through structured questionnaire. Descriptive and logistics regression model analysis were used to analyze the data. Findings have shown 48.7 percent of Terengganu respondents spent not more than RM100 on food per week, while Selangor had 41.2 percent within the same period who spent such amount. 35.4 percent of Selangor respondents spent between RM101-200 compared to Terengganu which spent same amount at 30.3 percent within the same periods. The survey shows 43.2 percent of Selangor households disposed 1-3kg food wastes, while Terengganu on the other hand had 51.3 percent who disposed same quantities of food wastes per week. Respondents with higher education, those on government jobs, small family size and ethnicity have significant impacts on the respondents' behaviour towards participation in sustainable food waste management program. Note: US$1=RM4.09

Socio-Economic Status and Knowledge Level of Brinjal Growers on Improved Production Practices in East Champaran District of Bihar

Brinjal has been considered as one of the important vegetable crop. Production and productivity of brinjal can be increased through adoption of new varieties and with improved technologies. The present study was conducted to understand the existing status of adoption of improved technology. This study was carried out in East Champaran district of Bihar during 2020-2021. By employing random sampling technique, 120 brinjal growers were selected and data were collected by personal interview method by using pre-tested interview schedule and later appropriate statistical analysis was done to find out the meaningful result. The results reported that majority of the respondents belonged to middle age (41.67%), educated to primary level of education (32.50%), possess land holding of below 1 ha (35%), earns medium level of annual income (45%), possess small family size (45%). Meanwhile, most of them had medium level of farm power (43.33%), membership in more than one organization (45%), low level of scientific orientation (51.67%), low level of extension contact (44.17%) and low level of progressiveness (52.50%). Meanwhile, most of them had medium level of knowledge on improved brinjal cultivation practices (64.17%) and had significant and positive association with age, education, farm power, social participation, extension contact, scientific orientation and progressiveness.

Entrepreneurial Behaviour of Livestock Entrepreneurs of Karnataka- A Socio-economic Analysis

India owns the largest livestock population in the world and it is bestowed with huge and diverse livestock resources. The animal husbandry sector provides large self-employment opportunities and is proved to be a boon for sustaining the livelihood of the resource poor farmers. A study was undertaken to analyze the socioeconomic and psychological profile of livestock entrepreneurs in Karnataka state. Four divisions viz. Bengaluru division, Mysuru division, Belagavi division and Kalaburagi division were selected for the study. A total of 160 livestock entrepreneurs were randomly selected and data were collected using structured interview schedule. The analysis of socio economic and psychological profile revealed that majority (58.75%) of the livestock entrepreneurs were of middle age group (35-50 years), and more than three forth (78.13%) of the livestock entrepreneurs are male. With respect education 36.88 per cent of them had middle school education and half (50.63%) of the entrepreneurs belonged to small family size(less than 6 members). Majority (56.88%) of the livestock entrepreneurs had animal husbandry as their major occupation with 43.75 per cent of the respondents had medium landholding (2-3 acres of land). More than half (51.25%) of the respondents had medium livestock possession and 45.63 per cent of the entrepreneurs had an annual income of more than Rs.4,00,001. Majority (53.75%) of the livestock entrepreneurs had (5 to 10 years) medium level of experience in livestock entrepreneurship. Majority of the respondent dairy farmers had medium economic motivation and scientific orientation. The study concludes that livestock entrepreneurs had different socioeconomic status due to varied attributes possessed by them.

Trend and Determinants of Fertility in a Declining Fertility Regime: A Study of Rural Uttar Pradesh

This study is an attempt to examine the socio-economic and demographic differentials in children ever born and desire for additional child in rural Uttar Pradesh using the empirical data set. Two stage stratified random sampling procedure was applied to select the respondents from ten villages of rural Raebareli district. Total 460 women having with at least one child below ten years of age were interviewed during September 2016 to February 2017. Children ever born (CEB) and desire for another child were the main outcome variables of the study. One-way ANOVA and chi-square test were used in the bi-variate analysis. Poisson regression and logistic regression were used in multivariate analysis. The mean children ever born in the study area was 2.7 children per women and 64.7 per cent of fecund women who had two children and not currently pregnant had no desire for another child. Women’s education, economic status of the household, autonomy index and higher caste group were significantly negatively associated with the children ever born in the study area. The desire for another child was significantly higher among those who had only daughters (OR = 1.99; p < 0.01). In conclusion, more emphasis needs to be placed on messages conveyed through the mass media, addressing the benefits of small family size and family planning, and programs that focus on reduction in newborn mortality could also be considered, which would also help to reduce fertility.

Families’ influence on severe childhood obesity in Turkey

Background Childhood obesity is increasing in Turkey like all countries on the world. Sociocultural and environmental factors play very important roles in increasing childhood obesity. It is aimed to find out the prevalence of severe obesity and related factors in Turkey. Methods Turkey conducted Childhood Obesity Surveillance of WHO European Region in 2016. This cross-sectional epidemiologic study was representative for Turkey, the anthropometric measurements of 11523 children in 580 primary schools were taken by health care professionals, analyzed by using WHO criteria. Logistic regression model taking into account complex sample design was used to analyze to find out the factors affecting severe obesity. Results The prevalence of severe obesity was found as 2.8% in the children aged 6 to 9 years old. Severe obesity was found significantly 1.86 times higher in male children than female children (p = 0,002); 1.65 times higher in children whose mothers' overweighed (p = 0.01) and 3.50 much higher in children whose mothers' obese than normal weighted mothers (p &lt; 0.001); 2.21 times higher in children whose fathers' overweighed (p &lt; 0.001) and 2.72 times higher in children whose fathers' obese than normal weighted fathers (p &lt; 0.001); 1.40 times higher in children whose mothers graduated from high school (p &lt; 0.001) and 2.04 times higher whose mothers graduated from university than mothers graduated from primary school (p = 0.04); 0.58 times lower in children having families with three or more children under 18 living in the household (p = 0.03) and 1.83 times higher in children who had relatives with diabetes and high cholesterol history (p = 0.03). Conclusions This is the first result on severe childhood obesity in Turkey; the percentage is one of the highest rates in Europe. The significant factors affecting severe obesity were found as overweighed and obese parents, higher educated mothers, small family size and having family members with the diseases related to obesity. Key messages Family structure and family lifestyle are found as the main social factors related to severe obesity in Turkey. Especially, mothers need more information on the health problem related to severe childhood obesity, also healthy eating behaviors.

Growers’ knowledge on spices cultivation in Shibganj upazila under Bogura district

The main objective guided the present study was to evaluate the knowledge of the growers on spices cultivation practice in Shibganj upazila under Bogura district. Three unions of the upazila were purposively selected based on the vicinity to the Spices Research Center, Bogura. Data were collected from selected growers using predesigned structured interview schedule. Eleven selected characteristics of the growers were considered as independent variables. As dependent variable, knowledge on spices cultivation practice was calculated by construction of a scale containing thirteen relevant questions. Coefficient of correlation was employed to determine the relationship between the selected characteristics of the growers and their knowledge on spices cultivation practice. Majority (67.8%) of the growers were middle aged, the highest portion (61.1%) of them belonged to primary level education. Major proportion (60.0%) of them had small family size, almost all of them (98.9%) possessed small to medium farm size, and huge majority (87.8%) of them earned up to BDT 240000 annually. About three-fourth (73.3%) of the farmers had medium extension contact, half of them (50.0%) had poor training experience while 40.0 percent of them had medium innovativeness. Great majority (85.5%) of the farmers had small to medium spices cultivation area (up to 0.6 ha) while almost three-fourth (72.2%) of them had medium to long durational (11 to above 20 years) practice of spices cultivation. Majority (65.6%) of them had moderate knowledge on spices cultivation technology compared to more than onefourth (26.7%) having high knowledge and only 7.7 percent had low knowledge on the same. None of the selected characteristics showed significant relationship with the knowledge on spices cultivation practice. Int. J. Agril. Res. Innov. Tech. 10(1): 102-107, June 2020

Genomic Selection at Preliminary Yield Trial Stage: Training Population Design to Predict Untested Lines

Genomic selection (GS) is being applied routinely in wheat breeding programs. For the evaluation of preliminary lines, this tool is becoming important because preliminary lines are generally evaluated in few environments with no replications due to the minimal amount of seed available to the breeder. A total of 816 breeding lines belonging to advanced or preliminary yield trials were included in the study. We designed different training populations (TP) to predict lines in preliminary yield trials (PYT) consisting of: (i) advanced lines of the breeding program; (ii) 50% of the preliminary lines set belonging to many families; (iii) only full sibs, consisting of 50% of lines of each family. Results showed that the strategy of splitting the preliminary set in half, phenotyping only half of the lines to serve as the TP showed the most consistent results for the different traits. For a subset of the population of lines, we observed accuracies ranging from 0.49–0.65 for yield, 0.59–0.61 for test weight, 0.70–0.72 for heading date, and 0.49–0.50 for height. Accuracies decreased with the other training population designs, and were inconsistent across preliminary line sets and traits. From a breeder’s perspective, a prediction accuracy of 0.65 meant, at 0.2 selection intensity, 75% of the best yielding lines based on phenotypic information were correctly selected by the GS model. Our results demonstrate that, despite the small family size, an approach that includes lines from the same family in both the TP and VP, together with half sibs and more distant lines, and only phenotyping the lines included in the TP, could be a useful, efficient design for establishing a GS scheme to predict lines entering first year yield trials.

Exploring The Nexus Between Family Size Planning and Retirement Planning in Ghana

The study articulates the perspectives and attitudes of workers in an attempt to uncover thoughts and ideas in relation to the phenomena of family size planning and retirement planning. Use was made of both quantitative and qualitative datasets. The sample [n=442] was selected using a multi-stage sampling technique. The paper finds that there is a link between family planning and retirement planning. The reasons for this nexus encompass the fact that large family sizes may inhibit saving abilities. Further, large family size hinders the ability to save. The ideal family size in this context ranges between 1 and 5. The findings show that family planning positively correlated (0.688) with retirement planning. Stated differently, family size correlates with planning towards retirement to a greater extent. Whereas large family size inhibits retirement planning, small family size facilitates less expenditure and better savings, and ensures the availability of financial resources to be channeled into retirement plans. These findings reflect a change in thoughts regarding large family size as opposed to small family size. A gradual shift pertains to smaller families with retirement planning in focus. Also, annexed to family planning is social relationship building, both of which have implications for later life planning.

Demographic Transition in Sub-Saharan Africa

The demographic transition is a global phenomenon but sub-Saharan Africa is several decades late. The quantitative characteristics of the region are well known, but they are insufficient to explain the lags even though sub-Saharan Africa is rightly taken as a synonym of a least developed region. The author revisits – within the African context – the concept of fundamental restructuring of reproductive behavior in response to improvements in child survival. Improved survival makes the outcome of reproductive behavior predictable and therefore makes rational family planning. Family planning assumes the form of insurance and replacement strategies, which have different fertility outcomes. In sub-Saharan Africa the threshold of saturation of child survival beyond which fertility starts to decline appear to be higher than elsewhere. Besides, as fertility does not respond automatically to improved survival, there are no rigid proportions that would have determined fertility outcome of a given decline of child mortality. Instead, there are always universal socioeconomic mechanisms that translate improvements in child survival into fertility reduction and these mechanisms function in tend in culture- or country-specific ways. Education is the main translator: its universal valuation coupled with substantive price tag leads to quantity–quality conflict; the opportunity cost of working time lost to childrearing is higher among better educated women; formal education is the most effective and the most durable instrument of diffusion of the modern way of life, which necessarily includes small family size. African nets of values and mechanisms of their transmission weaken these channels. The demographics of Africa operate with billions, and they are so specific that they often carry cognitive rejection. The demographics are scary; by itself this is a sufficient reason for denial. In addition, there is a longstanding political and intellectual tradition to deny or minimize the differences that separate Africa from other regions. Finally, apart from a narrow circle of scholars who concentrate on the issues of population growth and development, there is an overwhelming alignment with anti-malthusianism which is considered as a presumption rather than outcome of scientific debate. In fact, specific features of population reproduction in Africa, its enormous demographic potential coupled with economic stagnation should move to the forefront of research and quest for appropriate policy responses.