The rise in popularity of machine learning, streaming, and latencysensitive online applications in shared production clusters has raised new challenges for cluster schedulers. To optimize their performance and resilience, these applications require precise control of their placements, by means of complex constraints, e.g., to collocate or separate their long-running containers across groups of nodes. In the presence of these applications, the cluster scheduler must attain global optimization objectives, such as maximizing the number of deployed applications or minimizing the violated constraints and the resource fragmentation, but without affecting the scheduling latency of short-running containers.We present Medea, a new cluster scheduler designed for the placement of long-and short-running containers. Medea introduces powerful placement constraints with formal semantics to capture interactions among containers within and across applications. It follows a novel two-scheduler design: (i) for long-running containers, it applies an optimization-based approach that accounts for constraints and global objectives; (ii) for short-running containers, it uses a traditional task-based scheduler for low placement latency. Evaluated on a 400-node cluster, our implementation of Medea on Apache Hadoop YARN achieves placement of long-running applications with significant performance and resilience benefits compared to state-of-the-art schedulers. CCS CONCEPTS• Computer systems organization → Distributed architectures; • Software and its engineering → Scheduling; Cloud computing; • Theory of computation → Linear programming;

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This paper has assessed the diversification scenario of agriculture at the national level and its reflection at farm level situation alongside. It has been observed that concentration ratio (CR 4) for four major agricultural sub-sectors has declined from 73.6 per cent to 69.6 per cent for the study period, 1999-00 to 2013-14. It clearly indicates a shift in Indian agriculture from cereals-based production pattern to other high-value based production pattern. However, Simpson Index for Diversification (SID) indicates that the average national SID for all agricultural enterprises is 0.83 which spans from 0.60 for Punjab to 0.89 for Karnataka. Relating it to farm level situation, the primary survey in Banka and Bhagalpur districts of Bihar has been carried out in 2016-17 to find out the impact of agricultural diversification on farm income with two-stage least square technique (2SLS). Empirical analysis has suggested that diversification of farm by adopting ancillary, horticulture and other HVE like mushroom, etc. will increase farm income.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the market structure and value chain of pearl millet grain and fodder in India. There is a decline in demand for human consumption, with an increase in demand for non-food uses like cattle and poultry feed, raw material for starch and breweries industry. This paper explores alternative channels, uses and value chains of pearl millet grain and fodder. The paper examines in what ways small farmers can benefit from the evolving alternative uses for pearl millet grain in cattle and poultry feed industry, breweries and starch industry. The paper also analyses the impact of aggregators in increasing the efficiency of the value chain. Design/methodology/approach The study collected primary data from farmers, traders, commission agents and exporters and importers with innovative marketing channels with aggregators (Self-Help Groups) and without aggregators to analyze the prospects for improvements in marketing channels and value chain. Findings Given that the production of pearl millet is scattered and thin, there is a lot of scope for market aggregators to increase scale economies to reduce market costs to supply in bulk to food and industrial uses. Although there was some demand for human consumption high-quality grain, most of the future demand will come from cattle and poultry feed industry, breweries and starch industry. To tap these larger potentials, farmers need to aggregate their produce and ensure regular supply in bulk quantity at least to compete the cost with alternative grains like maize and broken rice. Research limitations/implications The research is based on the field-level data collection and observations obtained from Western India. This paper provides insights how the value chain of pearl millet is working and what improvements are needed to make value chain more efficient and inclusive. Although the results are applicable to similar neglected crops and area, more caution is needed. Social implications Through the formation of farmer aggregators, farmers can enhance their bargaining power vis-a-vis industry. Originality/value Till now, there is no study that explored the pearl millet value chain in detail in India, and the paper tries to fill this literature gap.

The demand for organic foods is increasing worldwide due to health and environmental benefits. However, there are several unanswered questions, such as: Do organic farmers generate higher profits? Will the cost of cultivation reduce to compensate for low yields? Can farmers practice as per the organic agriculture protocols and obtain certification? The literature on organic agriculture varies widely in terms of profitability, yields and costs of organic products. A few studies have researched site-specific organic agriculture, but none have compared organic with conventional agriculture at larger scale in India. The Indian government has promoted organic agriculture since 2015 through its pan-India scheme—Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY). Under this program, there were 13.9 million certified organic farmers in 29,859 organic clusters, covering 0.59 million hectares (about 0.4% of the cropped area in India). This study assessed the implementation process of PKVY and the impact at the farmer level using the Difference-in-Difference approach. An economic surplus model was employed to observe the macro scale using data from an all-India representative sample from 576 clusters for the crop year 2017. The results identified that organic farmers experienced 14–19 percent less costs and 12–18 percent lower yields than conventional farmers. The net result is a marginal increase in profitability compared to traditional agriculture. The economy-wide economic surplus model indicates that there will be a reduction in producer and consumer surplus due to reduced crop yields. However, if the shift from conventional to organic is confined to rainfed, hilly and tribal areas, there will be an increase in both consumer and producer surplus.