eChapters

Introduction

Reservoirs constitute the prime inland fishery resource in the country by virtue of their numerous production potential. These man-made ecosystems offer enough scope for stock manipulation through ecological maneuvering, paving the way for production hikes at a relatively low-capital investment. Unlike the aquaculture systems, where the development is capital intensive, a reservoir fishery development is labour productive and ensures employment for some of the weakest sections of our society.

INTRODUCTION

Coral reefs are fragile and most diverse and valuable ecosystems on earth. The stony corals are formed from the tiny, soft colonial organisms called polyps. They provide enormous ecological, economic services, and cultural value to hundreds of millions of people. They are significantly contributing to the nutrition, economic security and protection from natural disasters. They are often termed as the rain forests of the sea.

Coral reefs were first appeared 485 million years ago during the early Ordovician period. They belong to the class Anthozoa of animal phylum Cnidaria, which includes sea anemones and jelly fish. Coral reef is an under water ecosystem which is characterized by reef-building corals. Unlike sea anemones, colonies of coral polyps secrete a hard exoskeletons called reef which is made up of calcium carbonate to support and protect the corals. These reefs grow best in warm, shallow, clear, sunny and agitated water.

BIODIVERSITY

The term biodiversity was coined by Walter G. Rosen in the year 1985. Biodiversity refers to the variation among living organisms that can be found in a particular area such as terrestrial, marine and desert ecosystems and the ecological complexes to which they are a part. The study of biodiversity helps to understand the ecological stability, economic and ethical importance. Coral reefs are believed to have the highest biodiversity on the planet even more than a tropical rainforest. Though the coral reefs distributed in less than one percent of the ocean floor, they provide habitat for more than 25% marine life with more than 4,000 world’s fishes. They act as protective nurseries to many fish species, and shelter small fishes to grow. Coral reefs diversity is so rich that we do not have a firm count on all the species that live within it and every year discover new species.” There are about six thousand coral species in the world, in which few are growing in warm shallow waters near coastlines while others in the dark, cold seafloor of the open ocean.

22.1  Introduction

Plant pests have been part of man’s environment for a long time. Traditional agriculture, which included diverse crops and indigenous crop management practices, provided little opportunity for pests to build up and spread rapidly (Smith and Allen, 1954). Crop production is constantly threatened by increasing difficulties in controlling insect pests, which are a major impediment to improved livelihoods of poor farmers. However, in the quest to increase food production for the growing population, use of pesticides became a norm in crop management. Pesticides became an integral part of the process owing to losses from weeds, diseases and pests reducing the harvestable produce. Use of pesticides along with high yielding varieties, irrigation and improved seed did result in increased productivity. But the rampant use of these chemicals, under the adage, ‘if little is good, a lot more will be better’ has played havoc with human and other life forms.

Ecology is the inter-relationship between organisms and their environment. Weed ecology is study of inter-relationship between weed and their environmneent. Simply, Ecology of weeds means the inter-relationship of weeds with climate, soil, crops and other biotic factors. Terrestrial weed species persist in the soil by virtue of dormant structures, typically seeds or vegetative perennating organs such as rhizomes, tubers and taproots. In dense infestations, the banks of seeds or underground meristems from which new plants may be recruited into adult populations can be exceptionally large. Rao (1968) estimated that in Cyperus rotundus L. tuber populations of 10 million per hectare were possible, whilst Soerjani (1970) calculated that Imperata cylindrica may annually produce six tones of rhizomes per hectare. Typically seed banks of annual weeds in arable soils contain from 1000-10,000 seeds per m2whilst in grassland the upper limit to this range may extend at least to 1 million per m² (Mortimer 1994).

Introduction

Aquaculture resources in India is vast in the form of ponds and tanks of 2.35 million ha, reservoirs of 3.15 million ha, oxbow lakes and derelict waters of 1.3 million ha and brakishwaters of 1.24 million ha. At present, the total fish production is 6.4 mmt. Out of which inland fish production is 3.4 mmt. The total aquaculture production of 2.47 million tonnes that constitutes 4.2% of global production was valued at US$ 2.9 billion (FAO, 2006). Ponds and tanks are the prime resources for aquaculture, however only about 0.8 – 0.9 million ha is used for aquaculture currently. Recently, National Fisheries Development Board with huge budget provision has been established to improve production, processing, storage, distribution and marketing of fisheries products (Anon, 2006 a, 2006 b). During 10^th and 11^th plan periods higher fish production targets have been kept evisiging a growth of about 8 percent from inland sector.

1.    The first step in an econometric study should be to___________.

(a) Develop the specification

(b) Collect the data

(c) Review the literature

(d) Estimate the unknown parameters

2.    OLS stands for what in Econometrics?

(a) Optimally linearized solution

(b) There is no such thing in econometrics

(c) Ordinary least squares

(d) None of these

Econometrics : Mathematics and sophisticated computing applied to economics. Econometricians crunch data in search of economic relationships that have statistical significance. Sometimes this is done to test a theory; at other times the computers churn the numbers until they come up with an interesting result. Some economists are fierce critics of theory-free econometrics.

Economic Appraisal : See Economic evaluation.

Economic Burden of Disease : See Cost of Illness.

Economic Competition : The effort of two or more parties to secure the business of a third party by offering, usually under fair or equitable rules of business practice, the most favorable terms.

Economic evaluation (Economic appraisal) : The comparison of alternative courses of action in terms of their costs and consequences, with a view to making a choice.

Economic Evaluation : The systematic appraisal of costs and benefits of projects, normally undertaken to determine the relative economic efficiency of programs. See also Cost-benefit analysis, Cost-effectiveness analysis, Cost-minimization analysis, Cost-utility analysis.

Economic indicator : A statistic used for judging the health of an economy, such as GDP per head, the rate of unemployment or the rate of inflation. Such statistics are often subject to huge revisions in the months and years after they are first published, thus causing difficulties and embarrassment for the economic policymakers who rely on them.

Summary

Food production starts with a good soil. No matter the kind of seed and good agronomic practices that are put in place without a good soil yields will be low and hence income. ISFM is a technology that helps to solve the problem of soil infertility and production.
 
Farmers only accept and adopt a technology if they see it to be superior to what they have been doing and it makes business sense. Farmers will not worry about the bigger picture of food security or increased production – they need to make a profit to support their household.

Definition of terminologies and concept

Variables: Variables are the characteristic, number or quantity which increases or decreases over time and takes different values in different situations. Variables are those, whose value varies according to the situations. For example, maize yield, Stover, fertilizer, labor, land, pesticides, etc.
 
Dependent variable: Variables whose value is dependent on independent variables. These variables take different values only in response to independent variables. Yield of maize is dependent on amount fertilizer, fertilizer application methods, labor, pesticides etc. So in this case maize yield is dependent variables while amount fertilizer, fertilizer application methods, labor, pesticides are independent variables. However in other situation, maize yield can be used as independent variables also.

Introduction

Soil erosion is becoming a global challenge, causing various effects such as reducing crop yields, degradation of water quality, leading to inundation, degrading land by making it unsuitable for agriculture and others. Moreover, it is a significant problem that poses a devastating impact on food security, livelihoods, and the environment. It not only depletes the fertile soil needed for agriculture but also leads to reduced agricultural productivity, loss of biodiversity, and increased vulnerability to climate change.

Life cycle cost analysis

Economics of solar energy devices can be calculated through life cycle cost (LCC) analysis. Total life cycle cost of a device is comprised of capital cost, maintenance cost, replacement costs for damagaed components and operational cost. Before adding these above costs, all future costs (C) are converted to present worth considering the relative rate of inflation (i) and discount rate (d).

Where, PW is the present worth of any future cost, i is the relative rate of inflation and d is the discount rate per year and n is the time period in years. Relative rate of inflation accounts for the escalted increase or decrease in prices of a commodity in comparison to general inflation rate. For any commodity, if the price escalation is expected as per the general inflation rate then relative rate of inflation is considered zero. In general case, relative rate of inflation is considered zero. Discount rate accounts the real value of money in future and in most of the economies of the world it is about 8-12%, and therefore 10% is considered in most analyis. The discount rate also refers to the interest rate used in discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis to determine the present value of future cash flows. The discount rate in DCF analysis takes into account not just the time value of money, but also the risk or uncertainty of future cash flows; the greater the uncertainty of future cash flows, the higher the discount rate. A discount rate of 10 % per year would mean that in real terms it makes no difference to a farmer whether he has ? 100 now or ? 110 in one year’s time. Conversely, a cost of ? 110 one year from now has a present worth of ? 100. For a future single cost in n^th year, the present worth of that cost is calculated using Eq (1). However, for future multiple payments, costs are to be converted to present worth for each year and then needs to be cumulated. For calculation of annualized life cycle cost (ALCC) of solar devices, annuity factor (AF) needs to be calculated for a period of life cycle of the device as follows:

Abstract

Himachal Pradesh is spread over the altitudinal range varying from 352-6975 m amsl. Horticulture in upper reaches and cereals in valley areas form the major components of land use. Temperate fruits amongst the different fruits grown in the state occupy a major share  with respect to area (68%) and production (90%). About 92 per cent of the total geographical area of the state is directly and indirectly influenced by fruits farming through changes in socio-economic structure. This paper has been prepared to highlight the socio-economic issues, technological issues, growth in the states economy and efficiency of the social indicators. This study shows that majority of the total population (80%) in the state has been affected positively by the apple farming business. The role of women has been considered equally important due to strong interaction between orchard and household management activities majority of the orchardists have been found to be marginal and small covering about 47.1per cent of the total area. Amongst all the temperate fruits grown, apple growers enjoy comparatively a better performance with respect to socio- economic indicators. A tremendous increase in area and production under apple has been found during the previous years.

Weed Management

The productivity of crops much depends on intercultural and weeding operation. The efficient management practices ultimately increases the yield level. The productivity is much dependent on various attributes starting from the variety, climate including human resource management and other factors known well to the farmers. It is estimated that nearly 30-50 per cent of the crop is lost due to weed menace in the agricultural fields. The farmers use various methods of weed control like cultural, mechanical, chemical and manual means. Encompassing all these control measures is known as integrated weed management.

The impact of biotic and abiotic constraints, the machinery revolution, faster access to information, city development, social and economic context, climate changes that affect agricultural products and people's movement from one region to another, population income, new cropping technologies adapted to people's demand for food diversification and supply, technical and genetic progress, the impact of biotic and abiotic constraints, the machinery revolution, faster access to information and city development have all had an impact on agricultural market trends over the last ten years. (Bonciu et al., 2020a, Bonciu et al., 2020b).

Biodynamic farming, a holistic and ecological approach to agriculture founded by Rudolf Steiner, has gained prominence as a sustainable and ethical alternative to conventional farming methods. This method integrates ecological balance, soil fertility, and cosmic rhythms into farming practices. Despite its growing popularity, the economic viability and market dynamics of biodynamic farming present both opportunities and challenges. This article explores the economic aspects of biodynamic farming, including production costs, market demand, pricing strategies, and financial sustainability. It also examines the market trends, consumer preferences, and the role of certification in influencing economic outcomes. By analysing case studies and market data, this article provides a comprehensive overview of the economic and market considerations of biodynamic farming, offering insights into its viability and impact within the broader agricultural industry.

Abstract
Economic and policy considerations play a crucial role in shaping the landscape of modern agriculture. As the sector faces increasing pressures from global population growth, climate change, and resource constraints, understanding the economic dynamics and developing effective policies are essential for fostering sustainable agricultural practices. This chapter explores the economic factors influencing agriculture, including market dynamics, financial viability, and investment strategies. It also examines key policy considerations, such as regulatory frameworks, subsidies, and international trade agreements. By analyzing these aspects, the chapter aims to provide a comprehensive overview of how economic and policy considerations impact agricultural development and sustainability. It offers recommendations for policymakers, stakeholders, and industry leaders to create a more resilient and equitable agricultural sector.
Keywords: Economic considerations, policy frameworks, agriculture, market dynamics, financial viability, investment strategies, subsidies, international trade agreements, regulatory frameworks, sustainable agriculture.

Abstract

The temperate fruits have shown a remarkable progress as about 68 per cent of the total area under fruits and about 91 per cent of the total production of the fruits in the State is contributed by these fruits. The economic analysis of secondary data shows the increasing trend of area under fruits, vegetables as well as production of these crops in the State over a period of time.  Although maximum increase has been found during the last about 5 decades in case of fruits (about 236 times) yet production of vegetables has shown an increase of about 83 per cent  during the last about ½ decade. Similarly flower crops cultivation has also been increasing in the State which has been clear from the increasing number of flowers growing cooperative societies (48 in no.) in the State along with area  (129 ha) under different flower crops (Anon., 2004-05). More emphasis has been laid on diversification of crops so as to make proper use of limited land and other critical inputs. Economic analysis of primary data has shown benefit-cost ratios of fruits, vegetables and flower crops almost in the same range, i.e. maximum Rs. 4.50:1 to minimum 1.53:1, so with meager holding size, vegetable crops and floriculture have been found to be the best option of diversifying crops along with fruits growing so as to reap better remuneration from use of scarce resources.