Urban Development and the Making of Frontiers in/from Addis Ababa/Finfinne, Ethiopia

Frontier making in Ethiopia has historical roots from the formation of the modern Ethiopian state in the late-19th century through wars of conquest. The conquest, which was inspired by political and economic motivations of the highland Christian kingdom, used the notion of a “civilizing mission”—civilizing the “backward” and “underdeveloped” people, and “underutilized” spaces—through imposition of an imperial state system and Orthodox Christianity. The foundation and horizontal expansion of Addis Ababa or Finfinne by displacing Indigenous inhabitants was part of the state building project under successive regimes. Over the last century and a half, the city has continued its unchecked expansion in a process involving multilayered actors whose interests overlapped in terms of grabbing the land they considered “underutilized.” More specifically, the last three decades evince commoditization of farmlands, grazing areas, and cultural and sacred spaces through land lease, which eventually dissolve existing customary systems, values, and practices. This paper critically analyzes the dynamics of frontier making in or from Addis Ababa or Finfinne, the political economy behind such unchecked frontier expansion and how it activated the power of resistance in 2014. The paper concludes that frontier making in or from Addis Ababa through dispossession of Oromo farmers has been part of the broader political establishment in Ethiopia and should be viewed within the same lens.

Farming system approach to meet the challenges from extreme weather

Location specific and integrated farming system based technological management options reduce the climatic risk and better utilization of available natural resources produce higher agricultural productivity and thereby enhance food and livelihood security of small and marginal farmers of India. The significance of IFS approach is supportive in enhancing productivity to meet the food, feed and fuel for ever increasing human and animal population. It also increases the land productivity, profitability and also generate employment. Since small farms are often vulnerable to natural vagaries like flood, drought and farming remains at risk. Due to industrialization and population growth, the horizontal expansion of agricultural area is not possible. The vertical expansion in small farms is possible by integrating appropriate farming system components requiring less space and time and ensuring periodic income to the farmers. A farming system model was synthesized based on the studies conducted at ICAR-IIFSR located in western plain zone of Uttar Pradesh for a period of six years (2004-2010) revealed that Integrated farming system approach applied on a piece of 1.5 hectare irrigated land, besides fulfilling all the requirement of 7 members household food and fodder demand (animals) inclusive cost of production, could create an additional average annual savings of Rs. 47000/- in four fours of its establishment and more than Rs. 50000/- in subsequent years. the family gets some income round the year and another benefit is if due to any extreme event occurred at any time of the year, the farmer will get some income from any of the enterprises, so that it will cater to the need of the food security. Since each enterprise react differently to extreme weather events; the influence of droughts/floods/ higher temperature will be different to different enterprises and because of the diversification, the farmer will get some income from their enterprises, so that he can sustain under difficult times. This manuscript analyses how farming system approach is different and site specific and also how it will decrease the vulnerability under extreme climatic situations with some examples.

Product Innovation, Product Diversification, and Firm Growth: Evidence from Japan’s Early Industrialization

We explore how firms grow by adding products. We leverage detailed data from Japan’s cotton spinning industry at the turn of the last century to do so. This setting allows us to fully characterize the type of differentiation (vertical or horizontal) of new product introductions as well as whether the product is within or outside of the firm’s prior technological capabilities. We find that trying to introduce innovative products beyond the firm’s previous technologically feasible set, even if such trials fail, is a key to firm growth. Indeed, it mostly facilitates growth through the firm’s later success in horizontal product diversification. In long-term outcomes, the right tail of the firm size distribution becomes dominated by firms that first moved into technologically challenging products and then later applied their newly acquired technical competence to horizontal expansion of their product portfolios. Two mechanisms through which this knowledge transfer occurs are greater production system flexibility and higher product appeal to downstream buyers. (JEL D22, L11,L67, N65, N85, O31, O33)

Preliminary Evaluation of Maize (Zea mays L.) Hybrids for Grain Yield under Temperate Conditions

Maize (Zea mays L.) is the third most important cereal crop after wheat and rice. Improving maize production is considered to be one of the most important strategies for food security in the developing countries. The farmers in Kandi areas usually grow their own saved seed which comprises of composites and landraces due to which maize production in the area suffers due to low productivity. Considering this scenario, a number of hybrids were developed in order to improve yield and productivity in order to enhance their income. Hence evaluating the performance of hybrid maize genotypes in terms of yield in specific agro ecology is very crucial for horizontal expansion. The study was aimed to conduct the preliminary evaluation of 12 maize hybrids to determine their grain yields. The hybrids were ranked according to their superiority in yield over check.

Using Markov Chains to Predict Productivity of Maize in Iraq for the Period (2019-2025)

The research aims to predict the productivity of one of the most important major crops in Iraq, which is Maize, using Markov chains, which is one of the most important predictive methods that depend on relatively recent historical data and based mainly on previous data that is not far away. This is the advantage that Markov chains have, as relying on somewhat old historical data may negatively affect the predicted values. The results of the research showed the superiority of the third state to predict the productivity of Maize depending on the availability of Markov chains prediction conditions for this state. The results of the research also showed the continued decline in productivity for the coming years, as well as the impact of the predictive values on changes in the cultivated area more than changes in production, which confirms the existence of horizontal expansion at the expense of vertical expansion, that is, there is no intensification of production per unit area. The research also found that the actual values of productivity have approached the estimated values of the following years, and the matter applies to the convergence of these results for the subsequent years with the previous years, which confirms the accuracy of the method of Markov chains, in other words that what happened in the recent past had a clear impact in the future near.

Experimental Investigation and Numerical Simulation of Dynamic Characteristics for Multithermal Fluid-Assisted SAGD in Extraheavy Oil Reservoir

Loss of the vast majority of heat and steam is an unavoidable problem encountered during conventional steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) in extraheavy oil reservoirs. The noncondensate gas coinjection technique of reducing energy consumption and enhancing oil recovery can effectively solve this problem. Aiming at extraheavy oil with a high initial viscosity, the influence of noncondensate gases in multithermal fluids on the physical parameters of extraheavy oil was experimentally studied; the production characteristics and mechanism of multithermal fluid-assisted SAGD were studied through numerical simulation. A comparative investigation of the conventional SAGD and multithermal fluid-assisted SAGD injection schemes was conducted. The characteristics and mechanism of the steam chamber during the production processes were analyzed. The results show that a steam-gas-oil system forms in the steam chamber in the case of multithermal fluids. The steam chamber can be partitioned into four zones, and the flow of the oil mainly occurs in the steam condensation zone and the oil drainage zone. The injected multithermal fluids increase the horizontal expansion of the steam chamber, while the dissolved carbon dioxide reduces the residual oil saturation. Moreover, the nitrogen injection significantly reduces the heat loss and increases the heat utilization for multithermal fluid-assisted SAGD in developing extraheavy oil reservoirs.

Expansion Velocity Model of Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage considering Thermal Convection

Steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) is an important method used in the development of heavy oil. A heat transfer model in the SAGD production process is established based on the heat transfer effect caused by the temperature difference at the front edge of the steam chamber and the heat convection effect caused by the pressure difference. The observation well temperature method is used in this model to calculate the horizontal expansion speed of the steam chamber. In this manner, an expansion speed model considering heat convection and heat conduction is established for a steam chamber with a steam-assisted gravity drainage system. By comparing this with the production data extracted from the Fengcheng Oilfield target block, it is verified that the model can be effectively applied for actual field development. Simultaneously, by using the derived model, the temperature distribution at the edge of the steam chamber and production forecast can be predicted. Sensitivity analysis of the expansion rate of the steam chamber demonstrates that the larger the thermal conductivity, the faster is the steam chamber horizontal expansion speed, and the two are positively correlated; the larger the reservoir heat capacity, the slower is the steam chamber horizontal expansion speed. A larger heat capacity of the convective liquid indicates that there are more water components in the convective liquid, the viscosity of the convective liquid is low, and the expansion speed of the steam chamber increases accordingly. This research closely integrates theory with actual field production and provides theoretical support for the development of heavy oil reservoirs.