Search results

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a narrative review of the food insecurity literature pertaining to university and college students studying in Very High Human Development Index countries. It aims to document food insecurity prevalence, risk factors for and consequences of food insecurity and food insecurity coping strategies among students.

English articles published between January 2000 and November 2017 were identified using electronic databases. Quality Assessment Tool for Quantitative Studies assessed the study quality of quantitative research.

A total of 37 quantitative, three mixed-methods and three qualitative studies were included from 80,914 students from the USA (n=30 studies), Australia (n=4), Canada (n=8) and Poland (n=1). Prevalence estimates of food insecurity were 9–89 percent. All quantitative studies were rated weak based on the quality assessment. Risk factors for food insecurity included being low income, living away from home or being an ethnic minority. Negative consequences of food insecurity were reported, including reduced academic performance and poor diet quality. Strategies to mitigate food insecurity were numerous, including accessing food charities, buying cheaper food and borrowing resources from friends or relatives.

Given the heterogeneity across studies, a precise estimate of the prevalence of food insecurity in postsecondary students is unknown.

For many students studying in wealthy countries, obtaining a postsecondary education might mean enduring years of food insecurity and consequently, suffering a range of negative academic, nutritional and health outcomes. There is a need to quantify the magnitude of food insecurity in postsecondary students, to inform the development, implementation and evaluation of strategies to reduce the impact of food insecurity on campus.

This review brings together the existing literature on food insecurity among postsecondary students studying in wealthy countries to allow a better understanding of the condition in this understudied group.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how individual’s health beliefs, nutrition knowledge (NK) and attitudes towards food technologies play a role in the anti-consumption of dairy products or the consumption of dairy alternatives.

Self-reported data concerning the consumption of milk, yogurt and dairy products in general were collected online among 1,705 adults in Canada. Also included in the survey instrument were measures of NK and health beliefs as well as questions from the food technology neophobia scale. Anti-consumption of milk, yogurt and dairy as well as alternative dairy consumption as a function of these characteristics, in addition to demographic characteristics, is analysed using probit models.

Individuals who demonstrate resistance to innovations in food technology, those with lower levels of dairy-specific NK, and people who have less belief that dairy avoidance will have negative impacts on their health are more likely to be anti-consumers of milk and/or yogurt. The same is true for dairy products in general with the exception that people with higher levels of dairy-specific NK are more likely to be anti-consumers of dairy products in general.

Inadequate intake of calcium and vitamin D has negative consequences for long-term health. Given that dairy products are the primary source of these nutrients in the Canadian diet, it is important to understand the reasons behind dairy anti-consumption so that appropriate policy measures can be taken to address potential public health issues.

An investigation of the internet adoption on Taiwan’s senior farmers was examined in this study. The purpose of this paper is to discuss what specialist technology tools, software and training for senior farmers were available and how confident senior farmers were with using internet, and what internet activities were the most popular among senior farmers.

Quantitative data collected from the respondents were analyzed using descriptive statistical methods.

Key finding from this study is that the senior farmer enjoyed and increased their knowledge using internet with great enthusiasm.

High level of internet adoption for farmer’s learning is certainly worthy of further investigation.

Senior farmers can benefit from internet by using it for information, learning, training, and trading.

Senior farmers are increasingly using applications of internet not only to acquire knowledge and but also to enrich lifestyle.

E-learning is a possible approach using technology transfer delivery model in the agricultural community.

Ethiopia operates a large agricultural extension service system. However, access to extension-related knowledge, technologies and agricultural inputs is unequally distributed among smallholder farmers. Social learning is widely practiced by most farmers to cope with this unequal distribution though its practices have hardly been documented in passing on knowledge of agriculture and rural development or embedding it into the local system of knowledge production, transfer and use. The purpose of this study is, therefore, to identify the different methods of social learning, as well as their contribution to the adoption and diffusion of technologies within Ethiopia’s smallholder agricultural setting.

A mixed methods approach was used, comprising farmer and expert interviews, focus group discussions, informal individual discussions and key informant interviews. The data were documented, coded and later analyzed using SPSS and ATLAS.ti.

The findings showed that 55 per cent of the farmers in the studied areas fully relied on social, community-level learning to adopt agricultural technologies, while 35 per cent of them relied on social learning only partly. Farmers acquired knowledge through social networks by means of communication, observation, collective labor groups, public meetings, socio-cultural events and group socialization. Informal institutions such as iddir, debo and dado, helped farmers learn, adopt and diffuse technologies.

This study used the concept of epistemic oppression by Dotson (2014) as a conceptual framework to examine farmers’ access to extension services and to analyze how informal institutions serve as workplace learning for the smallholder farmers. The authors suggest community-level social learning serves as a coping mechanism against the prevailing limitations of the formal extension system, and at the same time, it guards against the deepening of social, political and epistemic inequalities that are inherent to the knowledge system.

This study examines the heterogeneous relationship between ad-hoc support policies, high government payments, low interest rates and farm debt use across farms of different sizes and across farm operators of different races, genders and experiences to inform the 2024 Farm Bill discussions.

Utilizing USDA’s Agricultural Resource Management Survey data for 2020 and 2021, this study characterizes the differences in short-term farm debt use and the amount of short-term debt during the COVID-19 pandemic period across several farm and farmer types using double selection LASSO and regression analysis.

Results show positive associations between government payments and debt use for all farm types and farmer demographics except for residence farms and non-white farmers, which may be due to their limited access to credit. Findings also indicate that farms that could already access credit, like commercial farms, increased their short-term debt during the pandemic per the decrease in interest rates. Moreover, the 2018 Farm Bill extended certain commodity support and direct and guaranteed loan program participation provisions that were previously more closely restricted. Beginning farmers seemed more likely to use short-term debt in response to higher pandemic government payments than their more experienced counterparts.

The insights from this study are timely and useful for policymakers for designing and implementing programs related to the new 2024 Farm Bill.

One of the explanations for the results is that beginning farmers have been more likely to use debt than most other groups of operators, signaling the success of special credit provisions. Our results are relevant to making upcoming policies related to female and nonwhite farm and ranch operators.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of crop insurance among Hungarian crop farmers and the responses to the introduction of the two-scheme risk management system. Specifically, first, it examines the economic and environmental factors affecting the willingness of farmers to contract crop insurance. Second, it reveals the relationship between having crop insurance and technical efficiency of crop producing farms.

Probit models of panel data are applied to explore the factors of insurance decisions. The relationship between efficiency and insurance is investigated with two-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) model with double bootstrap using panel data for the 2001 to 2014 period.

The results of Probit model estimations show that the education, the size, the indebtedness of crop producing farms and the new two-scheme risk management system are in positive correlation, while the concentration of farming activity are in negative correlation with the crop insurance contracting. The estimations of two-stage DEA model reveal that crop producing farms with an agricultural insurance contract are more efficient than the farmers without using this risk management tool.

Empirical investigation of the influencing factors of agricultural insurance demand in Hungary and the examination of the relationship between insurance and technical efficiency may contribute to the development of Hungarian risk management system.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the agricultural practices in a drought-prone region of India in an effort to find out how science, technology and innovation (STI) measures can address the existing problems and help achieve sustainable solutions. This study has been planned with two specific objectives: to study the agricultural practices of small and marginal-holding farmers in a drought-prone region and to examine the opportunities for suitable interventions to mitigate the impacts of droughts. The study is based on primary survey conducted in Banda district of Bundelkhand region, Uttar Pradesh, India.

Empirical survey was done in eight different blocks of a drought-prone region of India using structured questionnaire. The questionnaire was pre-tested with a group of 12 farmers during a workshop through a pilot survey conducted during April 2017. Stratified sampling based on land holdings (small farmers having 1–2 ha of land, medium farmers having 2.1–5 ha of land and large farmers having more than 5 ha of land) and irrigation types (canals and tube wells) were utilised in different blocks of the district for selecting farmers in the surveyed villages.

Findings suggest that due to various reasons like change in climatic conditions, frequent crop failure, crop diseases and high cost of production, farmers have adopted certain crops which are not suited to their agro-climatic conditions. The paper recommends that farmer’s school or “on-farm training school” have to be initiated to integrate farmers’ traditional knowledge with modern knowledge systems with amalgamation of STI tools.

Uttar Pradesh is divided into nine agro-climatic zones; however, this study is focused on Bundelkhand and may be region specific, though the findings are important for other drought-prone areas.

The paper links the existing agricultural practices and further linking them with farmers’ socio-economic, cultural and environmental settings. Only 17.5 per cent of respondents owned any agricultural equipment due to high cost of farm tools, difficulty in taking equipements on rental basis and lack of sharing tools among the farmers.

This paper targets small and marginal farmers in the drought-prone region of India who face the dual shock of climate impacts and poverty. Adoption of modern agricultural practices and use of technology is inadequate which is further hampered by ignorance of such practices, high costs and impracticality in the case of small land holdings.

This paper has advocated for well-organised, efficient and result-oriented STI system to mitigate the adverse impacts of drought-prone agriculture. Farming community in drough-prone areas needs adequate investment, local-specific technology, better quality inputs, real-time information on weather and most importantly latest know-how for sustaining commercial and cost effective sustainable agriculture.

Smallholder families in Papua New Guinea (PNG) feed the nation and produce income-generating cash crops such as coffee and cocoa. However, agricultural extension has not yet effectively reached many farming families in the country, and many families still work with semi-subsistence practices. As a result, the majority of farming families have insecure livelihoods, with many living below the poverty line. This chapter explores a collaborative research for development project that sought to address this issue.

Using data from two highlands sites in the Western Highlands and Jiwaka provinces, we outline the empowerment processes we developed in both our research and our learning activities. We illustrate how the experiential learning processes enabled women, especially those with low education, to confidently engage in this form of agricultural extension. Our work surfaced the knowledge of both women and men and supported families to determine how to work together in effective and equitable planned farming.

Various law and film scholars have noted that the judge occupies the place of a marginal figure in ‘legal cinema’ and in related scholarship. In this chapter I want to engage with the debate about the representation of the judge in film by way of an examination of a South African documentary, ‘Two Moms: A family portrait’ (2004). In the first instance this ‘family portrait’ appears to be neither an obvious candidate for inclusion in the canon of ‘legal cinema’ nor a film with a plotline dominated by a judge. But from this rather unpromising start this chapter explores how a film about an ordinary family made up of extraordinary people is an extraordinary film about law in general and about the figure of the judge in particular.