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An Assessment of the Critical Constraints to Wheat Production in Zimbabwe
... They also expressed that with the current price of input coupled with low output price wheat production in the area is not sustainable. Several previous studies, like Chawarika (2016) and Haruna et al. (2017), found that the cost of inputs was too high for smallholder farmers, and the low price of output did not offset the production expenses, discouraging investment in wheat cultivation. When farmers compared the high cost of production and the low selling price, many of them disengaged from farming activities, according to Edwin et al. (2020), a study conducted in Kenya. ...
Due to numerous production constraints, the real yield of wheat under smallholder farmer conditions in Nigeria is poor. The current study aims to look into the constraints to wheat production in the Bakolori Irrigation Scheme. As a result, the study’s objectives were to describe the socioeconomic characteristics of wheat farmers as well as to identify the constraints to wheat production in the study area. Two stages of sampling were used in the study. Eight agricultural villages were randomly chosen for the first stage, followed by a random selection of 753 wheat respondent farmers in the second stage. The study’s data was gathered from primary sources via semi-structured interviews in the Bakura, Talata Mafara and Maradun Local Government Areas and evaluated using descriptive statistics. The findings found that the majority of respondents were males with little formal education and small land holdings. It also classified wheat production constraints as biotic, abiotic, and socioeconomic. With 73%, 75%, and 75% of responding farmers, respectively, the first major restrictions based on this categorization were birds, timely sowing, and timely availability of input. kurchiya (Dove: Coturnix ypsilophora,), and Hasbiya (Pigeon: Columba livia) were the most generally identified bird pest by respondents as the first to invade the crop after sowing, while Buwa (Quarrel birds: Galliformes. Quail), was the most commonly identified bird during the flowering and ripening stages. This study suggests that the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Anchor Borrowing Program be used to make credit loans available at the appropriate times, and be maintained, since this will encourage farmers to actively participate in wheat production. Keywords:
... It is one of the most important crops for national food security and a source of livelihood in developing countries like Zimbabwe (Shiferaw et al., 2013). Wheat is considered the second most important cereal crop in Zimbabwe after maize (Chawarika, 2016). It is grown during the winter season (May-September) under irrigation, and it is the predominant crop grown during winter. ...
A robust early warning system can alert to the presence of food crises and related drivers, informing decision makers on food security. To date, decision-makers in Zimbabwe still rely on agriculture extension personnel to generate information on wheat production and monitor the crop. Such traditional methods are subjective, costly and their accuracy depends on the experience of the assessor. This study investigates Sentinel-2 NDVI and time series utility as a wheat-monitoring tool over the wheat-growing areas of Zimbabwe's Bindura, Shamva, and Guruve districts. NDVI was used to classify and map the wheat fields. The classification model's evaluation was done by creating 100 reference pixels across the classified map and constructing a confusion matrix with a resultant kappa coefficient of 0.89. A sensitivity test, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and area under the curve (AUC) were used to measure the model's efficiency. Fifty GPS points randomly collected from wheat fields in the selected districts were used to identify and compute the area of the fields. The correlation between the area declared by farmers and the calculated area was positive, with an R2 value of 0.98 and a Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 2.23 hectares. The study concluded that NDVI is a good index for estimating the area under wheat. In this regard, NDVI can be used for early warning and early action, especially in monitoring programs like ‘Command Agriculture’ in Zimbabwe. In current and future studies, the use of high-resolution images from remote sensing is essential. Furthermore, ground truthing is always important to validate results from remote sensing at any spatial scale.
... It is the lowest since the 1990s, 29.8% lower than in 1997. Wheat production has gradually begun to recover since 2003, with an average annual growth rate of 2.83%, with an output of 13144 million tons in 20189 [8,9]. Lack of understanding and research on the regularity of wheat yield fluctuation will lead to passive, blind, and even mistakes in macromanagement. ...
Wheat powdery mildew (WPM), caused by Blumeria graminis f.sp. tritici, is a significant disease of wheat throughout the world and has resulted in substantial yield and economic losses in wheat production. It is particularly important to understand the population distribution and genetic resistance of B. graminis f.sp. tritici. In 2019, the cumulative incidence of wheat powdery mildew in China was nearly 8.7 million hm2, which seriously affected the safe production of wheat in China. However, the proportion of disease-resistant wheat varieties in actual production was relatively low, and effective disease-resistant genes were lacking. As one of the main wheat-producing provinces in China, it is of great significance for normal wheat production to understand powdery mildew resistance in Hebei province. In this study, using wheat seedling culture in vitro, the physiological races of wheat powdery mildew in central Hebei province were identified, and the population toxicity frequency was analyzed. The results were as follows: (1) 36 strains were purified and 20 physiological races were identified. Among them, the dominant race is 015, and the distribution frequency is 16.7%. Race 077 is the second dominant race. (2) The frequency of virulence genes VEra, V8, V1, V3c, and V3f in population toxicity frequency analysis was more than 70%, while the frequency of virulence genes V2, MID, V20, V21, V4b, and V4 was less than 16.7%, and 46% of virulence genes of powdery mildew were higher than 40%. It shows that the virulence gene frequency of powdery mildew in Hebei province is high, and the varieties containing Pm2 + MID, Pm20, Pm21, Pm1b, Pm1, and other disease resistance genes have a certain value inbreeding.
... This section will review the literature on the role of FBOs in their endeavour to provide emergency humanitarian aid. According to Chawarika (2016) current research is of importance is it addresses critical issues. The section will contain literature from previous studies in the areas of humanitarian aid, NGOs and FBOs, in particular, this is from the macro perspective. ...
... Satisfaction can be defined as a psychological phenomenon, which is further defined as an emotional state that appears to a purchaser while making comparable process Wojciechowska-Solis, (2013). According to Chawarika (2016) customers are critical to analysing the business environment. It can further be defined as a result of service of product consumption and evaluating its characteristics. ...
... Capabilities of NPO managers could be enhanced through the creation of knowledge sharing bodies, which can be achieved through commitment of managers to such bodies to benefit from pooled knowledge hubs that are necessary for driving innovation. The current study views government support as vital for the continuity, competitiveness and efficiency of NPOs as supported by Chawarika (2016) who states that the government is considered as an active player in influencing the competitiveness of firms. The overall resolve of managers in the sample of NPOs to "do the right thing" and continually create benefit for their organisations does little to make a significant impact on the organisation's entrepreneurship. ...
The objectives of the study were to explore the management characteristics that are related to organisational entrepreneurship in not-for-profit organisations (NPOs) in Gauteng, South Africa as well as the relationship between organisational entrepreneurship and the organisational performance. The methodology involved a quantitative approach of collecting and analysing research data. A field study was conducted in Johannesburg, South Africa whereby research data were collected from 257 NPO managers from voluntary organizations. Using the SPSS 22 and the AMOS 22 software program, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was performed to analyze the research data. The study noted implications for NPO management teams, including the renovation of business model structures to incorporate continuous learning and constructive risk-taking in order to take advantage of the performance benefits derived from organisational entrepreneurship. The study also recommends further research into potential citizenship bodies for NPO management teams to foster commitment to their occupation in the non-profit sector. The research makes a significant contribution by providing a framework in which management's commitment to NPOs can be measured and analysed.
Achieving urban food security before and after COVID-19 lockdown among urban households’ in Ghana is key. This paper compares the pre-and post-COVID-19 lockdown food security status of urban dwellers in lockdown cities of the Greater part of Accra in Ghana using the Rasch and ordered logit model. From a sample of 340 respondents, the study found a significant difference in household food security status and predictors of food security. Prior to COVID-19 households were ‘High food secure’ (36.4%), but post-COVID-19 lockdown made more households ‘Very low food secure’ (12.35%). To combat post-COVID-19 lockdown food insecurity in urban agriculture is encouraged.
The 20 th century began with a rapid ramping up of national investments in and institutions engaged with research for food and agriculture. As the 21 st century unfolds, the global science and agricultural development landscapes are changing in substantive ways, with important implications for the funding, conduct and institutional arrangements affecting research for food and agriculture. Wheat improvement research is part of this broader agricultural innovation landscape. While there is a general consensus that the present and prospective future of the agricultural sciences bears little resemblance to the situations that prevailed in the formative years of today's food and agricultural research policies and institutions, many of these changes are poorly understood or only beginning to play out. This paper reports on selected new and emerging empirical evidence to calibrate the strategic private and public choices being made regarding wheat research in particular and food and agricultural R&D more generally.
Conceptions encompassing climate change are irreversible rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration, increased temperature, and changes in rainfall both in spatial- and temporal-scales worldwide. This will have a major impact on wheat production, particularly if crops are frequently exposed to a sequence, frequency, and intensity of specific weather events like high temperature during growth period. However, the process of wheat response to climate change is complex and compounded by interactions among atmospheric CO2 concentration, climate variables, soil, nutrition, and agronomic management. In this study, we use the Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator (APSIM)-wheat model, driven by statistically downscaled climate projections of 18 global circulation models (GCMs) under the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) A2 CO2 emission scenario to examine impact on future wheat yields across key wheat growing regions considering different soil types in New South Wales (NSW) of Australia. The response of wheat yield, yield components, and phenology vary across sites and soil types, but yield is closely related to plant available water capacity (PAWC). Results show a decreasing yield trend during the period of 2021–2040 compared to the baseline period of 1961–1990. Across different wheat-growing regions in NSW, grain yield difference in the future period (2021–2040) over the baseline (1961–1990) varies from +3.4 to −14.7 %, and in most sites, grain number is decreased, while grain size is increased in future climate. Reduction of wheat yield is mainly due to shorter growth duration, where average flowering and maturing time are advanced by an average of 11 and 12 days, respectively. In general, larger negative impacts of climate change are exhibited in those sites with higher PAWC. Current wheat cultivars with shorter growing season properties are viable in the future climate, but breading for early sowing wheat varieties with longer growing duration will be a desirable adaptation strategy for mitigating the impact of changing climate on wheat yield.
In a context in which the framework of agricultural policy and business is changing radically the objective of the government and farmers should be to support the development of systems that look likely to be winners in the future. As a result this paper uses a Policy Analysis Matrix (PAM) to determine whether wheat production would have a comparative advantage if produced under organic practices. The paper starts by analysing the comparative advantage of wheat under conventional practices, and later contrasts conventional with organic practices. The results of the analyses mainly indicate a comparative advantage for wheat grown under organic practices especially when the social cost benefit ratio (SCB) is incorporated into the analyses. This is because the domestic resource cost (DRC) criterion that is used by the PAM is confirmed to understate the social profitability of systems that use domestic factors intensively like organic wheat systems and favours systems that use less of these factors like conventional systems. The results also show the existence of distortions in the market even if wheat were to be produced under organic practises, although these are shown to be less than for wheat produced under conventional practices.
This article analyses trends in wheat consumption and imports in sub-Saharan Africa since 1980, and estimates the economic and demographic determinants of this rising demand for wheat. Results point to rising incomes, growing populations, and increasing women's labour-force participation as key drivers. Urban wheat-expenditure shares generally exceed rural ones and SSA's demand is met largely by imports and partly through domestic production on large-scale farms. Rising demand may therefore entail few farm–non-farm synergies and minimal prospects to spur broad-based economic development. The article concludes by discussing policy options for African countries to meet their staple food needs while also promoting pro-poor agricultural growth.
A major challenge for agricultural policy in Africa is how to address the market instability-related causes of low farm productivity and food insecurity. This paper highlights structural changes affecting the behavior of food markets in eastern and southern Africa and discusses their implications for the design of strategies to stabilize food prices. These changes include (1) an increasing trend in maize prices toward import parity levels, reflecting an emerging structural maize deficit in much of the region; (2) increasingly diversified food consumption patterns in both rural and urban areas; (3) highly concentrated marketed maize surplus, which have largely unrecognized implications for the magnitude of price risk faced by most farm households; and (4) the strategic interactions between private and public marketing actors leading in some cases to heightened market instability and food crises. In the prevailing dual market environment now characterizing most of the region, greater coordination, transparency, and consultation between private and public market actors is needed to achieve reasonable levels of food price stability and predictability.
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