Commercial Farms (commercial + farm)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Building landscapes: village development in Zimbabwe

LAND DEGRADATION AND DEVELOPMENT, Issue 3 2001
S. Moyo
Abstract This paper argues that there is a need to fill a specific empirical and conceptual gap in land policy analysis in Zimbabwe. This ,gap' has arisen from the predominantly macro level economic theoretical perspectives on the land question, and from an inadequate conceptualization of the local level character of the land debate in Zimbabwe. The purpose of this paper is to stress the importance of focusing on the land question from the standpoint of the peasant householders in the Communal Areas (CAs). These issues are raised through the examination of land use and land-use history in Mhezi Ward in Makoni District, Zimbabwe. This paper does not comment on the recent political moves to redistribute 1471 Large Scale Commercial Farms (LSCF) as this process must be discussed in another debate. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


The Application of Hydrogen Peroxide as a Treatment for the Ectoparasite Amyloodinium ocellatum (Brown 1931) on the Pacific Threadfin Polydactylus sexfilis

JOURNAL OF THE WORLD AQUACULTURE SOCIETY, Issue 2 2001
Dee Montgomery-Brock
Ectoparasite infections can cause death or a decline in the general health of farm-raised finfish. This paper reports the findings from two studies conducted to evaluate the efficacy of hydrogen peroxide as a therapeu-tant for the control of infections of Amyloodinium sp. on cultured Pacific threadfin Polydactylus sexfilis (locally called "moi"). Threadfin with amyloodiniasis collected from a commercial farm were used in both trials. Prior to the trials, and following hydrogen peroxide treatment, the extent of infection was determined by a gill biopsy procedure. An initial trial was conducted in the laboratory to assess the response of juvenile threadfin and Amyloodinium sp. trophonts to hydrogen peroxide exposure at four dosages: 0, 75, 150, or 300 mg/L for 30 min. In a trial on a commercial farm, a hydrogen peroxide treatment at 75 mg/L for 30 min was applied to juvenile threadfin in a grow-out tank. In both trials, hydrogen peroxide was immediately flushed from the culture system with sea-water after the 30 min exposure period. In the laboratory trial, treatment with 300 mg/L hydrogen peroxide resulted in 100% mortality of the exposed group of fish. However, single treatments with hydrogen peroxide at concentrations of 75 or 150 mg/L eliminated Amyloodinium sp. trophonts without causing loss of fish. In the field trial, a single treatment with 75 mg/L hydrogen peroxide greatly reduced levels of Amyloodinium infestation, and a second treatment 6 d later reduced Amyloodinium trophonts to a nondetectable level. These findings suggest that hydrogen peroxide is a suitable chemical for the treatment of amyloodiniasis of cultured, juvenile Pacific threadfin. [source]


Learning about Power: Development and Marginality in an Adult Literacy Center for Farm Workers in Zimbabwe

AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 4 2000
Blair Rutherford
In this article, we critically examine the rise and fall of an adult literacy center that we helped establish for farm workers during the course offieldwork on a commercial farm in Hurungwe District, Zimbabwe. We raise questions about the emerging conventional wisdom in the anthropology of development and postcoloniality more broadly that characterizes development primarily as a mechanism to impose Western agendas and control targeted peoples. Our tale of the "Night School" suggests that anthropologists and social scientists need to pay attention to the power relations of development and the varied hierarchies and arrangements "in the margins" of development that cross-cut wider interventions and relations of rule. [development, discourse, power, Zimbabwe, postcolonialism, gender, race, ethnography] [source]


Conditional Belonging: Farm Workers and the Cultural Politics of Recognition in Zimbabwe

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 1 2008
Blair Rutherford
ABSTRACT This article examines Zimbabwean land politics and the study of rural interventions, including agrarian reform, more broadly, using the analytical framework of territorialized ,modes of belonging' and their ,cultural politics of recognition'. Modes of belonging are the routinized discourses, social practices and institutional arrangements through which people make claims for resources and rights, the ways through which they become ,incorporated' in particular places. In these spatialized forms of power and authority, particular cultural politics of recognition operate; these are the cultural styles of interaction that become privileged as proper forms of decorum and morality informing dependencies and interdependencies. The author traces a hegemonic mode of belonging identified as ,domestic government', put in place on European farms in Zimbabwe's colonial period, and shows how it was shaped by particular political and economic conjunctures in the first twenty years of Independence after 1980. Domestic government provided a conditional belonging for farm workers in terms of claims to limited resources on commercial farms while positioning them in a way that made them marginal citizens in the nation at large. This is the context for the behaviour of land-giving authorities which have actively discriminated against farm workers during the politicized and violent land redistribution processes that began in 2000. Most former farm workers are now seeking other forms of dependencies, typically more precarious and generating fewer resources and services than they had accessed on commercial farms, with their own particular cultural politics of recognition, often tied to demonstrating support to the ruling political party. [source]


Potential sources of food hazards in emerging commercial aquaculture industry in sub-Saharan Africa: a case study for Uganda

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FOOD SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY, Issue 9 2009
Ananias Bagumire
Summary A study was conducted to assess sources of food hazards in Uganda's emerging commercial aquaculture industry based on Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP), focusing on inputs, their sources and farm-practices on ten representative commercial farms. Critical control points (CCPs) were identified to reveal potential hazards that would jeopardise any export trade. Site selection, water quality, fertiliser, fish seed, fish rearing facilities, feeds, and post-harvest practices were the main CCPs identified. Animal manure was used to generate plankton as pond fertiliser in nine of the ten surveyed farms and veterinary drugs were not found in any of the ten farms, which is starkly different from aquaculture in indutrialised countries. Potential sources of hazards from water were mainly: municipal waste flow which was more likely on five of the ten farms, domestic waste (four farms), agricultural run-off (three farms), and low water pH (three farms). Fish fry and fingerlings from other farms, feeds formulated on-farm from unapproved sources, chemical products, uncontrolled fish predators, and domestic animal and human activities were the other potential sources of hazards. A complete application of HACCP is recommended for producing safe products that meet the strict market standards of developed countries. [source]


The Concept of Sebestoimost' in Russian Farm Accounting: A Very Unmagical Mystery Tour

JOURNAL OF AGRARIAN CHANGE, Issue 1 2001
Gavin Kitching
This article examines the use of the concept of sebestoimost' - production cost -on large-scale commercial farms (former collective and state farms)in European Russia. This examination is based on ?eldwork carried out by the author and some Russian colleagues in 1996 and 1997. This concept and the accounting magnitudes it generates are of no utility now, and should be abandoned as an actual impediment to effective farm management in current market conditions. But the manipulation of sebestoimost' magnitudes in the Soviet period served, it appears, very important functions for farm chairmen and directors. In uncovering the mystery of those functions, an important revisionist hypothesis concerning the inef ?ciencies, or alleged inef?ciencies, of Soviet agriculture emerges. The data cited in this article are too scanty to prove the hypothesis, but are certainly suf ?cient to suggest that it warrants further investigation. [source]


The relationships between stocking density and welfare in farmed rainbow trout

JOURNAL OF FISH BIOLOGY, Issue 3 2002
T. Ellis
There is increasing public, governmental and commercial interest in the welfare of intensively farmed fish and stocking density has been highlighted as an area of particular concern. Here we draw scientific attention and debate to this emerging research field by reviewing the evidence for effects of density on rainbow trout. Although no explicit reference to ,welfare' has been made, there are 43 studies which have examined the effects of density on production and physiological parameters of rainbow trout. Increasing stocking density does not appear to cause prolonged crowding stress in rainbow trout. However, commonly reported effects of increasing density are reductions in food conversion efficiency, nutritional condition and growth, and an increase in fin erosion. Such changes are indicative of a reduced welfare status,although the magnitude of the effects has tended to be dependent upon study-specific conditions. Systematic observations on large scale commercial farms are therefore required, rather than extrapolation of these mainly small-scale experimental findings. There is dispute as to the cause of the observed effects of increasing density, with water quality deterioration and/or an increase in aggressive behaviour being variously proposed. Both causes can theoretically generate the observed effects of increasing density, and the relative contribution of the two causes may depend upon the specific conditions. However, documentation of the relationship between density and the effects of aggressive behaviour at relevant commercial densities is lacking. Consequently only inferential evidence exists that aggressive behaviour generates the observed effects of increasing density, whereas there is direct experimental evidence that water quality degradation is responsible. Nevertheless, there are contradictory recommendations in the literature for key water quality parameters to ensure adequate welfare status. The potential for welfare to be detrimentally affected by non-aggressive behavioural interactions (abrasion, collision, obstruction) and low densities (due to excessive aggressive behaviour and a poor feeding response) have been largely overlooked. Legislation directly limiting stocking density is likely to be unworkable, and a more practical option might be to prescribe acceptable levels of water quality, health, nutritional condition and behavioural indicators. [source]


Does Pond Water Reflectance Influence Double-crested Cormorant Selection of Aquaculture Ponds?

JOURNAL OF THE WORLD AQUACULTURE SOCIETY, Issue 3 2010
Andrew A. Radomski
Double-crested cormorants, Phalacrocorax auritus, are a frequent and major avian predator on channel catfish, Ictalurus punctatus, and other aquaculture species throughout the southeastern USA. Although cormorant movements and occurrence within the aquaculture production region are understood, no studies have focused on the mechanisms utilized by these avian predators to select foraging sites within these high-density aquaculture systems. The objective of this study was to determine if cormorant abundance is associated with specific (ultraviolet to visible) light reflectance spectra within commercial catfish ponds. Three commercial farms were used in this study; each farm had four ponds classified as "preferred" and another four ponds classified as "avoided" based on observing cormorant numbers for 3 mo prior to reflectance measures (>100 h observation for each pond). Reflectance and pond turbidity were measured weekly for 7 wk during the period of maximal over-wintering cormorant numbers. Water samples were collected at the surface (1 cm depth) and secchi depth (10,41 cm) at two locations (upwind and downwind sides) within each pond to determine spectral reflectance and turbidity. Average pond reflectance values were not significantly different between ponds preferred and avoided by cormorants; however, upwind reflectance significantly differed from downwind reflectance between cormorant use groups. Using cross-validation discriminant analysis, the accuracy of separating upwind ponds preferred and avoided by cormorants was over 62%. Repeated measures ANOVA identified the reflectance at 370, 380, 460, 500, 510, and 620 nm as significantly different between ponds preferred and avoided by cormorants. The lower wavelengths (380,410 nm) correspond to known UV-A sensing compounds in cormorants and the other wavelengths share characteristics associated with algal biomass. Cormorants utilize ponds that have lower algal biomass when compared with avoided ponds. [source]


Occurrence and distribution of Raspberry bushy dwarf virus in commercial Rubus plantations in England and Wales

PLANT PATHOLOGY, Issue 6 2001
D. J. Barbara
Serological surveys for Raspberry bushy dwarf virus (RBDV) made between 1995 and 1997 and covering ,,10% of the commercial farms growing Rubus (red raspberry and hybrid berries) in England and Wales showed that this virus was present on approximately one-quarter of all farms and in approximately one-sixth of all plots tested. RBDV was found in all of the four main raspberry cultivars being grown at that time (Autumn Bliss, Glen Moy, Glen Prosen and Leo), in Loganberry and in Tayberry. Fifteen RBDV genotypes (including two that appeared to be mixed) were identified using RT-PCR/RFLPs, but the majority of genotypes were found only rarely. Of the RBDV isolates tested, two genotypes each comprised 12·5% and another 46·4%. None of the three most common genotypes was associated solely with single Rubus cultivars and vice versa. It is suggested that two separate outbreaks of RBDV are occurring in England and Wales. One outbreak comprises the most frequent genotype combined with one of the moderately frequent genotypes; this outbreak is largely confined to the main growing areas and is either spreading between farms or coming from multiple local sources. Circumstantial evidence suggests that these isolates (and hence this first outbreak) are of the RB pathotype. The second outbreak consists of the other moderately frequent genotype and those genotypes which are less common. These genotypes appear to be more scattered across England and Wales and seem more likely to be coming from local sources and not to be spreading naturally between commercial farms. [source]


Effect of feed restriction on the growth performance of turbot (Scophthalmus maximus L.) juveniles under commercial rearing conditions

AQUACULTURE RESEARCH, Issue 8 2010
Isidro Blanquet
Abstract Two trials were performed to study the effect of periodic feed deprivation (trial 1) or feed restriction, followed by satiation feeding (trial 2) on the growth performance of turbot juveniles under commercial rearing conditions. In trial 1, duplicate groups of 350 fish with an initial weight of 62 g were fed a commercial diet to apparent visual satiation for 7, 6, 5 or 4 days a week for 83 days. At the end of the trial, fish weight was directly related to the number of feeding days but feed efficiency and protein efficiency ratio were not affected by treatments. At the end of the trial, there were no differences in whole-body composition among groups. In trial 2, duplicate groups of 500 fish with an initial weight of 33 g were fed a commercial diet to satiation (100%) or feed restricted to 90%, 80% and 70% of satiation for 90 days. Thereafter, all groups were fed to satiation for 34 days. During the feed restriction period, growth was directly related to feed intake, while during the satiation feeding period, it was inversely related to the previous feeding level. At the end of the trial, the final weight was not different among groups. At the end of the feed restriction period, whole-body lipid content showed a trend to decrease with an increase in the feed restriction level. The results of this study indicate that under practical conditions, turbot juveniles should be fed daily as even cycles of short periods of feed deprivation negatively affect growth, while not improving feed efficiency. On the contrary, even after a relatively long feed restriction period, fish shows compensatory growth, and this may be used as a feed management strategy for controlling fish production in commercial farms. [source]


Streptococcosis in red hybrid tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) commercial farms in Malaysia

AQUACULTURE RESEARCH, Issue 5 2009
Najiah Musa
No abstract is available for this article. [source]