Browsing by Author "Naidoo, Denver."

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A case study of female smallholder farmers in Kilmun, KwaZulu-Natal: examining the role of indigenous knowledge systems to climate change in increasing agricultural output and food security.
(2021) Dludla, Qophelo Sinenhlanhla.; Naidoo, Denver.
Climate change affects all four dimensions of food security: food availability, food accessibility, food utilisation, and the stability of food systems. Climate change risk reduction is one of the twenty-first century's primary challenges. Climate change is expected to have a severe impact on Africa's food security and ability to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Its impact on Africa that rely on rainwater agriculture and have little means to mitigate and adapt to climate change is likely to be quite severe. Climate change risk management solutions include both mitigation and adaptation. Climate change and global food insecurity are inextricably linked. The quantitative data were collected by semi-structured questionnaires, while the qualitative data were collected through a transect walk and PRA tools. The objectives were to (i) ascertain smallholder farmers' perceptions of climate change risks; (ii) ascertain the implications of climate change and variability on agriculture, and (iii) ascertain the critical role of indigenous knowledge systems in agriculture for climate change adaptation. The findings revealed that indigenous knowledge that has been used and practised sustainably for centuries makes a significant contribution to climate change adaptation and mitigation, as well as food security, according to the researchers. The findings of the study should be of particular relevance to climate change specialists who are already trying to develop a sound response to climate change. In the face of global climate change, policymakers must draw on the most up-to-date information available.
An evaluation of climate change effect on community gardens crop production aimed at enhancing household food security in Dlangezwa, Umdoni Municipality.
(2021) Naicker, Merishca.; Naidoo, Denver.; Ngidi, Mjabuliseni Simon Cloapas.
In South Africa, food security at the household level still remains a major challenge (Stats SA, 2020), despite the various initiative programmes provided by the government to help alleviate poverty among lower-income households. The” One home, one garden’ initiative and the ‘community gardens’ introduced in 2010 have been considered as vehicles to buffer food insecurity at household level. However, lately the province has been experiencing the episodes of climate variations. For example, in 2015 the province experienced drought and flooding spells. This attack brings forth some concern, as the climate change episodes could be deterring the progression of community/household gardens, thus threatening the household food security. The aftermath and or continuing attacks of the effect of the climate variation on crop production in household/gardens, could be aggravating low crop production. The study aimed to investigate the effect of climate change on community garden crop production and the farmers' household food security. A survey was conducted among 120 participants of the community gardens to determine their knowledge, perception, and attitude towards climate change. A series 10 focus group discussions were held to further probe on experiences, observations and the behaviors that the farmers have engaged on as the coping strategies to counteract or mitigate the effects of climate change. Key informant interviews with municipality and the Department of Agriculture officials provided insight into the interventions and measures taken by the local Municipality to mitigate the effects of climate change. Moreover, the key informant interviews, served as the study trustworthiness enhancer, as the data collected from the participants was further verified through these interviews. Only 38.3% of the population understood the meaning of Climate Change, which was the minority of the population. Climate change was understood to be the changes in temperature and rainfall patterns in the area. The perceived outcomes of climate change was the reduction of crops and the water supply in the area. The gardens were affected by the onset of pest , diseases and a reduction of water for irrigation. To overcome these challenges the community gardens relied on the the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) for support. The most planted crop by the gardens was spinach, and the least planted crops were beetroot and brinjal. Crops like spinach have a short growing period and produces large yields, and therefore it was most planted. The minority of 41.7% received enough food from the community gardens, while the majority 58.3% did not receive enough food. It was determined that the majority, 40% of the surveyed population, were moderately food insecure and only 15.8% of the population were food secure. The external help received was mainly from the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) and not the local Municipality. They receive chemicals, seeds, training, and inputs from the DARD. The issues faced by climate change were the increase of pests and disease, change in planting seasons of crops and the change in temperatures and rainfall patterns. It was concluded that the community gardens have not been successful in alleviating food insecurity among the households. It was recommended that a study be conducted on the improvement of productivity and resistance to climate change in community gardens. They have identified the primary alterations associated with climate change as changes in rainfall patterns and temperatures. Despite their awareness, people are apprehensive and fearful of Climate Change. To overcome this obstacle, the DARD must promote active climate change awareness in the community. This will assist community people in learning about climate change and how to reduce the effects of climate change.
Exploring the impacts of droughts and the skills gap on smallscale livestock farmers in selected areas of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
(2023) Shabalala, Othaniel.; Naidoo, Denver.
Abstract available in PDF.
Farmers’ perception and adaptation to climate change: case study of vulnerable areas in uMhlathuze Local Municipality in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
(2020) Yende, Abla Nomfanelo Precious.; Naidoo, Denver.; Ngidi, Mjabuliseni Simon Cloapas.
Global climate change has become a crucial concern, with smallholder farmers in developed countries being the most vulnerable In Africa, especially Sub-Saharan Africa, the majority of smallholder farmers cultivate crops and depend on agriculture for food and livelihoods. As a result, smallholder farmers must be mindful of the consequences of climate change and shifting weather conditions in order to implement appropriate adaptation steps. Without adaptation, climate change would have a serious impact on the agricultural development of smallholder farmers. As a result, however, smallholder farmers from Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Africa lack the tools such as infrastructure, finance, information, and technology that could help them survive. The study examined smallholder farmers' perceptions of climate change, as well as the types of changes they have made to their agricultural activities in response to climate change, in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, more specifically in the rural region of KwaDlangezwa in the Mhlathuze Municipality. This study employed a mixed-methods approach, which incorporates quantitative and qualitative analysis. The quantitative approach used a standardised questionnaire to elicit responses from 101 smallholder farmers who were purposefully chosen to participate. Qualitative results were gathered by focus group discussions with smallholder farmers in order to delve further into the farmers' views of climate change and their adaptation choices. Additionally, the logit regression model was used to classify determinants (factors affecting farmers') of adaptation to climate change in this analysis. According to the study's results, the majority of smallholder farmers were female (79.2%) and older (49.5% ). The majority of smallholder farmers engaged in crop cultivation for household use (75.2%). Smallholder farmers relied on their indigenous skills when it came to crop selection, planting seasons, and weather forecasting (63.4% ). About 56% of smallholder farmers were aware of climate change, 98 percent perceived a rise in temperature, 46.5 percent perceived an increase in rainfall, and 50.5 percent perceived a reduction in rainfall owing to prolonged drought seasons. The focus group discussions show that smallholder farmers feel climate change is the result of their forefathers' or God's wrath and that they do not understand it. Climate trends have had a significant negative effect on the population of smallholder farmers, including crop loss (99.0% and food insecurity (65.3%). However, 90.1% of smallholder farmers say that they have received no training on climate change intervention, and 96.0% report that they have made no investment in climate adaptation technology. Around 94.1% reported receiving no assistance from extension agencies, resulting in just 30.7% adapting to climate change. They have developed mostly by shifting planting dates, crop diversification, and changing planting dates to both temperature and rainfall changes. Although the Logit regression study indicates that four factors are statistically significant for climate change adaptation. These factors are gender (P=0.028), age (0.038), gross hectares of land (P=0.003), and years of cultivation (P=0.018), both of which are statistically important. Additionally, the study's findings indicated that smallholder farmers faced adaptation challenges such as a lack of knowledge (83.2%) and farm inputs (such as machinery, tractors, and improved seeds) (60.4% ). 98% of smallholder farmers confirmed that climate change has impacted their agricultural operations, resulting in a reduction in farm income for 85.1% of smallholder farmers. The majority of female smallholder farmers (95.0%) indicated that their households lacked agricultural-based food products. Droughts (77.2 percent), price spikes (42.6 percent), and flooding are the primary causes of these food crises (22.8 percent ). According to the focus group discussions, while they are adapting to climate change through indigenous expertise, they believe it will help them to learn more cost-effective adaptation approaches that would increase crop production. It is critical, therefore, to conduct awareness-raising and training programmes to teach farmers about climate change, its consequences, and the necessary methods to employ in response to increases in both rainfall and temperature. Additionally, the government would need to provide inputs for climate change adaptation and expand extension programmes to these areas to ensure continued surveillance after farmers have been trained.
Human action recognition using spatial-temporal analysis.
(2019) Naidoo, Denver.; Walingo, Tom Mmbasu.; Tapamo, Jules-Raymond.
In the past few decades’ human action recognition (HAR) from video has gained a lot of attention in the computer vision domain. The analysis of human activities in videos span a variety of applications including security and surveillance, entertainment, and the monitoring of the elderly. The task of recognizing human actions in any scenario is a difficult and complex one which is characterized by challenges such as self-occlusion, noisy backgrounds and variations in illumination. However, literature provides various techniques and approaches for action recognition which deal with these challenges. This dissertation focuses on a holistic approach to the human action recognition problem with specific emphasis on spatial-temporal analysis. Spatial-temporal analysis is achieved by using the Motion History Image (MHI) approach to solve the human action recognition problem. Three variants of MHI are investigated, these are: Original MHI, Modified MHI and Timed MHI. An MHI is a single image describing a silhouettes motion over a period of time. Brighter pixels in the resultant MHI show the most recent movement/motion. One of the key problems of MHI is that it is not easy to know the conditions needed to obtain an MHI silhouette that will result in a high recognition rate for action recognition. These conditions are often neglected and thus pose a problem for human action recognition systems as they could affect their overall performance. Two methods are proposed to solve the human action recognition problem and to show the conditions needed to obtain high recognition rates using the MHI approach. The first uses the concept of MHI with the Bag of Visual Words (BOVW) approach to recognize human actions. The second approach combines MHI with Local Binary Patterns (LBP). The Weizmann and KTH datasets are then used to validate the proposed methods. Results from experiments show promising recognition rates when compared to some existing methods. The BOVW approach used in combination with the three variants of MHI achieved the highest recognition rates compared to the LBP method. The original MHI method resulted in the highest recognition rate of 87% on the Weizmann dataset and an 81.6% recognition rate is achieved on the KTH dataset using the Modified MHI approach.
The role of non-governmental organisations in facilitating smallholder farmers’ sccess to markets in Eswatini.
(2022) Stambuli, Emmanuel.; Naidoo, Denver.
Market access is believed to be a necessity for smallholder farmers who produce crops and sell surplus crops for income purposes. The lack of market accessibility is a challenge faced by the majority of smallholder farmers. Lack of market accessibility is caused by various factors such as low levels of production, poor infrastructure as well as issues to do with high transportation costs. However, the role played by Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) within the agricultural sector has been of influence in facilitating market access for smallholder farmers. NGOs in developing and less developed countries have identified the need to support smallholder farmers and intervene to alleviate poverty and positively contribute to improving smallholder farmer livelihoods. In the Kingdom of Eswatini (KoE), there has been a growing emphasis on smallholder farmer agri-business development to enable smallholder farmers to benefit from market operations. Smallholder farmers are, however, still faced with constraints that negatively influence their participation in various markets. In the KoE, smallholder farmers have often found it difficult to produce crops in large quantities, and crops with good quality for the available markets that are highly dominated by commercial farmers. However, the Ministry of Agriculture in the KoE has managed to collaborate with key international organisations such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). As a result, programmes such as the Swaziland Agricultural Development Programme (SADP) have been launched to work with local NGOs to establish marketing platforms for smallholder farmers seeking to engage in agri-business. This has resulted in the need to fully explore the role of NGOs in facilitating market access for smallholder farmers and what the smallholder farmers think about the work that the NGOs do in improving their agricultural livelihoods. The study focused on exploring the role of NGOs in facilitating market access for smallholder farmers. The study adopted a mixed-method approach, and the data collection was conducted through the distribution of questionnaires to smallholder farmers and the conducting of interviews with NGO representatives. The selection of participants occurred using purposive sampling. The smallholder farmer participants were recruited from various NGOs in the KoE that this study selected. A total of six NGOs working with smallholder farmers in the KoE ensured that several of their smallholder farmer beneficiaries and representatives participate in the study. The questionnaires were analysed using SPSS 27 and the interviews were analysed using Nvivo 12. The study revealed that NGOs do play a vital role in assisting smallholder farmers to have access to markets from the production level to the market accessibility level. Furthermore, the study revealed that smallholder farmers rely on NGOs for production inputs to increase their yields and for NGOs to find appropriate markets for them. The research also found that NGOs have their challenges when it comes to operating with smallholder farmers and facilitating market access for them. Further, the study revealed that a lack of access to funding is a major constraint that smallholder farmers are faced with and are therefore unable to produce high-value crops which can enable them access to various formal markets. The study recommends that NGOs in the KoE ought to train smallholder farmers more on the importance of establishing their markets in the communities that they come from. The study recommends that market identification, accessibility, and creation for smallholders should be the focus for policymakers and NGOs. Interventions aimed at enhancing market accessibility and participation among smallholder farmers in the KoE should be implemented. There is also a need for the government to play a vital role in assisting NGOs in the KoE to meet their goals. Lastly, it is recommended that a market-led approach to smallholder farmer development be adopted to improve the commercial prospects of smallholder farmers whilst bolstering farmers’ livelihoods.
Understanding the effect of nutritional knowledge, dietary intake, physical activity and assessing the anthropometric measurements of Dlangezwa high school learner's.
(2022) Gumede, Noluthando.; Naidoo, Denver.; Du Preez, Cornelia.
The purpose of the study was to understand the effect of nutritional knowledge on physical activity, dietary intake, and anthropometric measurements in high-school learners. The study further underscored the value of healthy eating habits and nutritional education in relation to adolescents' overall health. The aim of the study was to understand the high school learners' nutritional awareness, determine their dietary consumption, assess their anthropometric measurements, and analyze whether high school girls are physically active or less active. A total of 202 survey questionnaires were administered to teenage girls, from grade 10 to 12, who were purposefully selected to participate in the study. In-depth interviews were undertaken with various learners in order to evaluate their food consumption and dietary habits. We measured weight and height to determine body mass index (BMI). The growth reference data chart for ages 5 to 19 from the World Health Organization (WHO) was used to assess the weight classification of learners. Inference about the collected data was made using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The findings of the study showed that there was a strong association between age and food group consumption (p < 0.001), which indicates that age has a significant effect on diverse food intake. Hence, it was noted that, as the learner's age increases, their food consumption also increases. It is noteworthy that the intake of healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables was noticeably poor for all the grades. With regard to consumption percentage, spinach and amaranth leafy vegetables were consumed at a rate below 2%, while consumption of vitamin A-rich vegetables such as butternut, carrot, beetroot, etc., was at a rate less than 5% amongst all the learners. Other vegetables, like cabbage and eggplant, were eaten at a rate of less than 30%. The intake of sugar from chocolate, candy, and fizzy drinks such as soda and tonic water was significantly high for all learners. In general, confectionary sugar intake was 85% of all grades. Also, the rate of fat consumption by learners ranged from 48% to 72%, with grades 10 and 12 having the highest percentage of fat consumption, ranging around 72% and 53%, respectively. From the results of the study, it could be stipulated that learners studying in lower grades, such as grade 10 learners, have better nutrition knowledge and dietary intake when compared to grade 12 learners. Body Mass Index (BMI) measurements indicated that the majority of learners are overweight, which was positively linked to the age of the learners at 25 kg/m2 or higher for females aged 0 to 19 years. The research found that as the age of learners or grade level increased, so did their BMI. The involvement of learners in all physical activities was tracked, and the percentage of participation was generally low in all grades, ranging from 1–26%. Physical activity participation, duration, and frequency all decrease as grade level rises. Generally, it could be inferred that as far as age is concerned, teenagers are at risk of becoming overweight and obese because they are not vigilant about their diets, so they eat high-fat content foods and sugary foods. On the other hand, the students consumed fewer fruits and vegetables and were not physically active. The findings reveal prevalent nutrition awareness in the grades, but also found a higher proportion of overweight students than is recommended. Programs from the government, community, and parents are required to encourage adolescent girls to improve their diet, level of physical activity, and weight control.