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Cut use of chemicals, diversify crops: FAO chief
Rome, Oct 2 (IANS/AKI) Attaining sustainable development means shifting away from high-input and resource-intensive farming and food systems towards more sustainable practices, FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva said.
“Today, it is fundamental to produce food in a way that preserves the environment and biodiversity,” Graziano da Silva said in an address at the biennial meeting of FAO’s Committee on Agriculture (COAG) on Monday.
Current farming practices have contributed to deforestation, water scarcity, soil depletion and high levels of greenhouse gas emissions, he told the meeting taking place in Rome from Monday through Friday.
“We have to implement sustainable practices that provide healthy and nutritious food, ecosystem services and climate-change resilience,” said da Silva.
To achieve this switch requires reducing the use of pesticides and chemicals, increasing crop diversification, and improving land conservation practices, among other measures, the FAO Director-General stressed.
He pointed to the inefficiency of current food systems in eradicating hunger, despite the fact that enough food was being produced to feed the entire global population, and underscored how hundreds of millions still do not have the income to buy the food they need or the means to produce it themselves.
“Changes are necessary to ensure that our ambition of nourishing people while nurturing the planet becomes a reality,” he added.
Many of the world’s more than 820 million chronically undernourished people are family farmers living in developing countries’ poor rural areas and who most need support to improve their livelihoods and build resilience, especially in relation to the impacts of conflicts and climate change, Graziano da Silva said.
“If we fail to create opportunities for poor rural people to thrive, especially women and youth, we will also fail to build a safer and more peaceful world,” he added.
Innovation, which is crucial for revitalizing rural areas and to make agriculture more attractive to young people, underpins these efforts, the Director-General said.
Da Silva noted how a lack of high quality and timely agricultural data was a key constraint on transforming the agriculture sectors and implementing the 2030 sustainable development Agenda and said extra funds were needed for data collection and other areas of FAO’s work to reach these goals.
Other discussions slated at this week’s meeting include a review of the implementation of FAO’s Climate Change Strategy the Global Framework on Water Scarcity in Agriculture and a proposal to scale up the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems initiative, FAO stated.
–IANS/AKI
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International online casino Casino Days has published a report sharing their internal data on what types and brands of devices are used to play on the platform by users from the South Asian region.
Such aggregate data analyses allow the operator to optimise their website for the brands and models of devices people are actually using.
The insights gained through the research also help Casino Days tailor their services based on the better understanding of their clients and their needs.
Desktops and Tablets Lose the Battle vs Mobile
The primary data samples analysed by Casino Days reveal that mobile connections dominate the market in South Asia and are responsible for a whopping 96.6% of gaming sessions, while computers and tablets have negligible shares of 2.9% and 0.5% respectively.
The authors of the study point out that historically, playing online casino was exclusively done on computers, and attribute thе major shift to mobile that has unfolded over time to the wide spread of cheaper smartphones and mobile data plans in South Asia.
“Some of the reasons behind this massive difference in device type are affordability, technical advantages, as well as cheaper and more obtainable internet plans for mobiles than those for computers,” the researchers comment.
Xiaomi and Vivo Outperform Samsung, Apple Way Down in Rankings
Chinese brands Xiaomi and Vivo were used by 21.9% and 20.79% of Casino Days players from South Asia respectively, and together with the positioned in third place with a 18.1% share South Korean brand Samsung dominate the market among real money gamers in the region.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is way down in seventh with a user share of just 2.29%, overshadowed by Chinese brands Realme (11.43%), OPPO (11.23%), and OnePlus (4.07%).
Huawei is at the very bottom of the chart with a tiny share just below the single percent mark, trailing behind mobile devices by Motorola, Google, and Infinix.
The data on actual phone usage provided by Casino Days, even though limited to the gaming parts of the population of South Asia, paints a different picture from global statistics on smartphone shipments by vendors.
Apple and Samsung have been sharing the worldwide lead for over a decade, while current regional leader Xiaomi secured their third position globally just a couple of years ago.
Striking Android Dominance among South Asian Real Money Gaming Communities
The shifted market share patterns of the world’s top smartphone brands in South Asia observed by the Casino Days research paper reveal a striking dominance of Android devices at the expense of iOS-powered phones.
On the global level, Android enjoys a comfortable lead with a sizable 68.79% share which grows to nearly 79% when we look at the whole continent of Asia. The data on South Asian real money gaming communities suggests that Android’s dominance grows even higher and is north of the 90% mark.
Among the major factors behind these figures, the authors of the study point to the relative affordability of and greater availability of Android devices in the region, especially when manufactured locally in countries like India and Vietnam.
“And, with influencers and tech reviews putting emphasis on Android devices, the choice of mobile phone brand and OS becomes easy; Android has a much wider range of products and caters to the Asian online casino market in ways that Apple can’t due to technical limitations,” the researchers add.
The far better integration achieved by Google Pay compared to its counterpart Apple Pay has also played a crucial role in shaping the existing smartphone market trends.
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