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We conducted a policy situation analysis in three Mekong region countries, focused on how the animal and human health systems interact to control avian influenza (AI). The study used scoping literature reviews aimed at establishing existing knowledge concerning the regulatory context. We then conducted a series of key informant interviews with national and sub-national government officials and representatives of producers and poultry farmers to understand their realities in managing the complex interface of the two sectors to control AI. We found signs of formal progress in establishing the policy and legislative frameworks needed to enable cooperation of the two sectors but a series of constraints that impede their effective operation. These included the competitive relationships involved, especially with budgetary allocations and mandates that can conflict with each other. Many local actors also view development partners (e.g., bilateral and multilateral donors) as having a dominant role in establishing these collaborations, limiting the extent to which there is local ownership of the agenda. The animal and human health sectors are not equally resourced, with the animal health sector disadvantaged in terms of surveillance and laboratory systems, human resources and financial allocations. Contrasting strategies for achieving objectives have also characterised the two sectors in recent decades, seeing a major shift towards the use of incentive-based approaches in the human health sector but very little parallel development in the animal health sector, largely dependent on command and control approaches. Successful future collaborations between the two sectors are likely to depend on better resourcing in the animal health sector, increasing local ownership of the agenda, and ensuring that both sectors can use the full range of regulatory strategies available to achieve objectives., Highlights • One health is impeded by low-level trust between animal and human health sectors. • Bureaucratic red tape makes information sharing difficult between the two sectors. • Both sectors are establishing legislative and policy frameworks zoonotic outbreaks • Animal health is less resourced for service delivery, surveillance, etc. • Human health sector incentivizes the market, animal health uses command and control.

This study revisits the relationship between income inequality and economic growth using provincial-level data from the Philippines over a ten-year period (1991–2000). This study demonstrates that ...

We investigated the role of spatial dependency in the technical efficiency estimates of rice farmers using panel data from the Central Visayan island of Bohol in the Philippines. Household-level data were collected from irrigated and rainfed agroecosystems. In each ecosystem, the geographical information on residential and farm-plot neighborhood structures was recorded to compare household-level spatial dependency among four types of neighborhoods. A Bayesian stochastic frontier approach that integrates spatial dependency was used to address the effects of neighborhood structures on farmers’ performance. Incorporating the spatial dimension into the neighborhood structures allowed for identification of the relationships between spatial dependency and technical efficiency through comparison with non-spatial models. The neighborhood structure at the residence and plot levels were defined with a spatial weight matrix where cut-off distances ranged from 100m to 1,000m. We found that spatial dependency exists at the residential and plot levels and is stronger for irrigated farms than rainfed farms. We also found that technical inefficiency levels decrease as spatial effects are more taken into account. Because the spatial effects increase with a shorter network distance, the decreasing technical inefficiency implies that the unobserved inefficiencies can be explained better by considering small networks of relatively close farmers over large networks of distant farmers.

Food security in the future will require sustained increases in agricultural productivity with efficient use of resources in intensive farming systems. We studied the energy efficiency of irrigated lowland rice production in double-rice cropping systems in farmers’ fields, experimental triple-rice systems, and experimental diversified cropping systems in the Philippines. The mean total agronomic energy input (AEI) expended on rice crops in farmers’ fields varied from 12.4 to 13.1 GJ ha−1. The AEI for rice varied from 12.8 to 22.8 GJ ha−1 in the triple-rice system and 15.3 to 30.9 GJ ha−1 in diversified rice-based systems. The combined energy use in N fertiliser and fossil fuel accounted for more than 60% of total AEI used in farmers’ fields and over 75% of total AEI used in experimental fields. Manual labour accounted for less than 3% of the total AEI in these systems. Mean net energy yield productivity (NEYp) of the rice produced varied from 11.3 to 12.3 GJ Mg−1 of grain yield in farmers’ fields, 12 to 12.5 GJ Mg−1 of grain yield in triple-rice production, and 9.3 to 10.2 GJ Mg−1 of grain yield in diversified rice-based systems. Future rice production systems will require more mechanisation as labour supply becomes insufficient to meet demand. Such rice production systems of the future will require innovative agronomic practices to achieve high yields, high fertiliser use efficiency, and low fossil fuel demands in order to match or exceed the energy efficiency of current rice farming.