The paper studies the work by Andrzej Urban entitled “Pamiętnik. Nasz ród, moja rodzina i moje przy niej losy” [A Diary. Our Kind, My Family and My Life with Them], a farmer from the Podkarpacie Region who was born in Lutcza. It was published twice, in 1936 and in 2015, and not only significantly enriched Polish diary literature, but also serves as a source for recently developing research into oral history. The analysis in this article is based on the second edition of the “Diary”, which repeats the text written by the author verbatim, with all its spelling, syntactic and stylistic imperfections. It is a precious piece of material for research for not only historians and sociologists, but also for linguists.

The material basis for the article are numerous official and unofficial anthroponyms occurring in Urban’s narrative. These are authentic onyms that have mostly reference, informative and expressive functions. Their use, especially referring to generally known persons in the social micro- and macro-scale, has a positive effect on the authentication of the described events. They also characterise the author of the text indirectly, showing, for instance, his somewhat deep onymic awareness and historical knowledge.

Annual losses of cocoa in Ghana to insect pests are significant. The use of integrated pest management (IPM) tools is critical for effective pest management. Previous studies on the subject have considered how farmers perceive the economic impact of insect pests on cocoa. These studies however did not investigate farmers’ ability to identify pests, associated damage symptoms and their implications for pest management. The current study, therefore, assessed farmers’ ability to correctly associate insect damage with the pest species that caused it. A total of 600 farmers were interviewed in the Eastern, Ashanti, Western, Brong Ahafo and Central Regions of Ghana with a structured open and closedended questionnaire. Most farmers (>85%) were unable to correctly identify and associate pests to their damage. The majority (>80%) of farmers also could not link the immature stages of insect pests to their adult stages. Wrong identification of the major pests (>85%) led to a wide variation in the timing of insecticide application amongst farmers. The majority of the farmers (60%) interviewed had not received training in insect pest identification. The study shows that 90% of the farmers, who had received some training, got it from the Cocoa Health and Extension Division (CHED) of the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD). Almost all respondents (98%) agreed that correct pest identification is critical for effective pest control. The importance of pest identification and monitoring as a component of IPM is discussed.

The objective of this study was to ascertain the socioeconomic and geospatial traits responsible for little or no usage of tractors for land clearing and cultivation by rural farmers in Ogun State, Nigeria. Data were obtained on the study objec-tives with use of interview guide, in-depth discussion and field observation a randomly selected 247 arable crop farmers. The obtained data were subjected to frequency count and binominal analysis of variance. Results showed factors such as farmers’ inability to afford tractor acquisition and/or hire tractors services (prop = 1.00, p < 0.05) as the major economic traits encumbering tractor usage for land preparation. The social traits included inadequate available of tractors to serve the farmers (prop = 0.76, p < 0.05), and farmers’ apprehension of possible destruction of soil structure and/or farm land (prop= 0.64, p < 0.05) as a result of tractor usage for land preparation. The geospatial traits were stump/tree distribution (prop = 0.97, p < 0.05) and land fragmentation (prop = 0.92, p < 0.05). It was thus concluded that both socioeconomic and farmgeospatial traits interactively encumbered farm tractorisation in the study area. It was recommended that farmers should be supported technically and financially by stakeholders in agro-development so as to enable them to afford tractor usage for land cultivation.

Irrigation network maintenance is very important to ensure the function of irrigation run well. Therefore, maintenance fee is necessary to maintain the irrigation network. The problem is the maintenance cost of irrigation network is expensive, the second highest cost after rehabilitation costs. Thus, participation of farmers in irrigation network maintenance is essential. One of participation by farmers is in the form of regular fees. This study aims to determine the number of fees farmers are willing to pay to maintain irrigation networks through the willingness-to-pay approach. This study was conducted in the irrigation area of the Gonggang reservoir in Magetan District. The subject is farmers who use irrigation – the data collection technique used by observation, interview, questionnaire, and documentation. The data analysis technique used is the contingent valuation method with steps (1) determining the hypothetical market, (2) obtaining bids, (3) estimating average willingness to pay, (4) estimating bid curves, and (5) aggregating data. The result shows that the amount of farmers’ willingness to pay the maintenance fees for irrigation networks at Gonggang reservoir irrigation area in Magetan District by using the contingent valuation method is IDR 90,621 (USD 5.45) for each hectare for each planting period with total willingness to pay in the population of IDR 116,188,708 (USD 7,951.59) for each planting period.