Abstract1)Recent scandals of milk additives in several developing countries provoked controversy about quality issue of dairy products, grapping academic attention to the dairy supply chain. In this paper, we first focus on moral hazard problem of self-interested entities about the quality across the dairy supply chain, due to unobservable and unverifiable quality management efforts of all entities – including dairy producers, stations, and a final producer – and high inspection cost for the quality. Based on the identified moral hazard problem, we understand why the adoption of IoT-based tracking systems about quality produced from each entity is a must, different from RFID-based tracking systems.
Abstract2)Agricultural water management has gained enormous attention in the developing world to alleviate poverty, reduce hunger and conserve ecosystems in small-scale production systems of resource-poor farmers. The story of food security in the 21stcentury in India is likely t o be closely linked to the story of water security. Today, the water resource is under severe threat. The past experiences in India in general and in Andhra Pradesh in particular, indicated inappropriate management of irrigation has led to severe problems like excessive water depletion, reduction in water quality, water logging, salinization, marked reduction in the annual discharge of some of the rivers, lowering of ground water tables due to pumping at unsustainable rates, intrusion of salt water in some coastal areas etc. Considering the importance of irrigation water resource efficiency, Krishna Western Delta (KWD) of Andhra Pradesh was purposively selected for this in depth study, as the farming community in this area are severely affected due to severe soil salinity and water logging problems and hence, adoption of different water saving crop production technologies deserve special mention. It is quite disappointing that, canals, tube wells and filter points and other wells could not contribute much to the irrigated area in KWD. Due to less contribution from these sources, the net area irrigated also showed declining growth at a rate of –6.15 per cent. Regarding paddy production, both SRI and semi-dry cultivation technologies involves less irrigation cost (Rs. 2475.21/ha and Rs. 3248.15/ha respectively) when compared to transplanted technology (Rs. 4321.58/ha). The share of irrigation cost in Total Operational Cost (TOC) was highest for transplanted technology of paddy (11.06%) followed by semi-dry technology (10.85%) and SRI technology (6.21%). The increased yield and declined cost of cultivation of paddy in SRI and semi-dry production technologies respectively were mainly responsible for the low cost of production of paddy in SRI (Rs. 495.22/qtl) and semi-dry (Rs. 532.81/qtl) technologies over transplanted technology (Rs. 574.93/qtl). This clearly indicates that, by less water usage, paddy returns can be boosted by adopting SRI and semi-dry production technologies. Both the system-level and field-level interventions should be addressed to solve the issues/problems of water management. The enabling environment, institutional roles and functions and management instruments are posing favourable picture for executing the water management interventions in the State of Andhra Pradesh in general and in KWD in particular. This facilitates the farming community to harvest good crop per unit of water resource used in the production programme. To achieve better results, the Farmers’ Organizations, Water Users Associations, Department of Irrigation etc., will have to aim at improving productivity per unit of water drop used and this must be supported through system-wide enhancement of water delivery systems and decision support tools to assist farmers in optimizing the allocation of limited water among crops, selection of crops based on farming situations, and adoption of appropriate alternative crops in drought years.
Abstract1It takes lots of time and labor if a worker have to measure the water quality at a certain but designated time every day in an un-automated aqua farm. In addition, if the equipment is soaked in the sea water consistently, it will be contaminated by diverse floating matters and barnacles, and it often becomes mal-functional within 2~3 months. Therefore, we need to develop a system with which the sensed data could be checked in real time and operated automatically, while preventing the contamination of the sensor, a crucial component for water quality measuring equipment, as much as possible, and increasing the replacement cycle. We have developed a non-cleaning water quality measuring equipment and its software which are used in the fishery household of offshore aqua farms. By providing the workers with a mobile application which has a function of monitoring the water quality in real time, they can check the situation directly without going to the fishery household.
Abstract2)The incidents of garbage dumplings in 2004 and the report on giant castella are the examples that shows how big the influence of broadcasting on the industry is. There were discussions on the importance of securing the objectivity of broadcasting, however, the existing related researches have lacked the analysis of actual proof for the influence of broadcasting contents, and as that of the law and system was confined to theoretical arguments, there were not enough suggestions for realistic alternatives. In this paper, we will examine the influence of broadcasting contents on the food industry through an analysis of actual proof, and propose alternatives in terms of the law and policy for securing the objectivity and fairness of broadcasting, to solve this problem.