Small scale agriculture

Government should further beef up policy support to promote the sector's higher quality development China will prioritize agricultural development and rural areas to modernize agriculture by 2035. However, two major challenges exist. First, the country's huge population, limited agricultural land and water scarcity make China more suitable for labor and technology-intensive farm produce, instead of land-intensive products. Second, most farmers in China are smallholders. The country's 220 million rural households work on about 110 million hectares of farmland－the average plot per rural family is less than 0.5 hectare. In contrast, the average farmland size of the 2.1 million US family farms is 170 hectares, and the number is 18 hectares in the European Union. Furthermore, most Chinese farming households do not produce for sale, but sell whatever is left after meeting their own requirements. Besides, most farmers are smallholders employed in non-farming sectors on a part-time … [Read more...] about Road to agricultural modernization

TO help Filipino farmers discard their obsolete ways, the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (Searca) has unveiled a new program, called Emerging Innovation for Growth (EIG). According to Searca Director Glenn Gregorio, EIG is powered by Searca’s “innovEIGhts” model of fostering collaboration among the academe, industry and government. EIG is the flagship program in Searca’s 11th Five-Year Plan that is focused on “Accelerating Transformation through Agricultural Innovation,” or Attain. “The challenging task of [weaning away] our farmers from obsolete ways of farming that is limited to a production perspective toward an agribusiness mindset in an innovative agriculture ecology called ‘Agriculture 4.0’ requires working together with partners and organizations who share this goal,” Gregorio said. The program was launched on Wednesday via the Searca Online Learning and Virtual Engagement (Solve) platform in a public event called … [Read more...] about Searca’s EIG program seeks collaboration

A BAGUIO and a Quezon City resident have both won in the 2020 photo contest of the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (Searca). Mauricio Victa of Baguio City was this year’s People’s Choice Award winner, receiving over 2,300 likes on Facebook. His photo shows a smiling boy and his grandfather holding sea urchins in Santiago town in Ilocos Sur. Michela Ramirez of Quezon City, meanwhile, bagged the second prize for her photo showing a masked farmer tending to backyard seedlings. Her photo reflects how many Filipinos suddenly turned to backyard farming for food and nutrition security when the country was put on lockdown due to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. Searca Director Dr. Glenn Gregorio said the contest theme “Faces of Attain” was part of the launch of Searca’s 11th Five-Year Plan (2020 to 2025) focused on Accelerating Transformation Through Agricultural Innovation (Attain). Winning the first and third prizes, as well as a … [Read more...] about Filipinos bag awards in Asean photo tilt

The discovery of graphene—a one-atom-thick sheet of covalently bonded carbon atoms—inspired the research community to generate a variety of 2D materials. Graphene, MoS 2 , the silicon equivalent of graphene, and more all have distinct properties based on the chemical bonding among their component atoms. And it's possible to leverage these properties to create commonplace devices on an unprecedentedly small scale, like a three-atom-thick LED . Further Reading Researchers craft an LED just two atoms thick Obviously, the more materials we have to work with, the better we can fine-tune one of these devices to our needs. But producing 2D materials is a challenge, as there are a limited number of substances that lend themselves to the chemically bonded layers we know how to work with. Now, an Australian-US team (writing in Science ) has devised a way to make a broad class of atomically thin metal oxides, including 2D versions of materials already in use by the electronics … [Read more...] about Running chemical reactions in liquid metal makes atomically thin materials

Goalpokhor (West Bengal): Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said on Wednesday (April 14) that Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is trying to destroy Bengal and its culture while addressing his first rally in West Bengal in this election season. Rahul Gandhi said, "BJP wants to destroy Bengal's culture, heritage and divide it. In Assam, they are doing the same thing; in Tamil Nadu, they are trying to do the same thing with their alliance partner AIADMK," adding "The BJP has nothing to offer except for hatred, violence and divisive politics." Mocking the BJP's slogan of building "Sonar Bangla", the former Congress president termed it as a "mirage and said they "sell the same dream in every state", adding said the saffron party has nothing to offer except for hatred, violence and dividing people on the basis of language, religion, caste and creed. He further said, "In every state, they say similar things like Sonar Bangla. But, they only offer dividing people on the basis of … [Read more...] about BJP wants to destroy Bengal’s culture, heritage and divide it: Rahul Gandhi in a West Bengal rally

The hallucinogen found in the illegal substance known as magic mushrooms appears safe for treating the anxiety felt by patients who have advanced, terminal cancer, according to a new study. The results of the small-scale study in California provide preliminary evidence that the compound psilocybin can reduce anxiety and improve the mood of those patients without harmful effects. Separate studies are under way at two universities. "There were no physiological adverse effects from the treatment, and there were no psychological adverse effects," said study researcher Dr. Charles Grob, of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute, in Torrance "Nobody had a bad trip, nobody had a bad anxiety reaction." The study was the first in more than 35 years to examine the use of hallucinogens as psychiatric therapy for patients facing death, according to the researchers. However, Grob said, it involved only a dozen participants, and the dose they received … [Read more...] about Hallucinogen Comforts Fatally Ill Patients in Study