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What We Talk About When We Talk About Food Systems: Discourse In An Emergent Field, Hailey Grohman

Food Systems Master's Project Reports

This project is made up of three distinct parts: a communications report from the 2016 UVM Food Systems Summit, a discourse analysis that uses the Summit as a text, and a narrative essay addressing the 2016 Summit's core question, "What Makes Food Good?" The three parts come together to form an analysis of communications within the discipline of food systems, one which grapples with emergent themes and issues in the field.

Agricultural Impacts On Rural Food Access In Vermont: A Situational Analysis And Ideas For The Future, Meghan E. Brooks

Food Systems Master's Project Reports

This project examines how the state of Vermont is working toward increasing rural food access through agricultural practices. Four Vermont organizations or farms were interviewed to better understand the successes and challenges associated with increasing rural food access. Next, a situational analysis was conducted to determine the feasibility of a community farm that assists low-income and low-access Vermont residents to obtain healthy, local food.

Characterization Of Inter-Animal Variation In The Innate Immune Response Of The Bovine And Its Relation To S. Aureus Mastitis., Aimee Benjamin

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Mastitis represents one of the major economical and animal welfare concerns within the dairy industry. Animals affected with this disease can experience a range of clinical symptoms from mild discomfort and swelling of the udder to a severe systemic inflammatory response that could result in the death of the animal. This range of responses is due to differences in pathogen, environment, and inter-animal differences in their innate immune response. A dermal fibroblast model was used to predict the magnitude of an animal's innate immune response towards an intra-mammary S. aureus challenge. Animals whose fibroblasts exhibited a low response phenotype, characterized …

Vermont Agricultural Resilience In A Changing Climate: An Investigation Of Farmer Perceptions Of Climate Change, Risk, And Adaptation, Rachel E. Schattman

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Climate change forecasts tell of significant challenges ahead for agrifood systems at all scales, from global to highly local. Farmers are often at the forefront of these challenges. How farmers perceive climate related risks, and the actions they take to protect or adapt their lives and livelihoods are therefore a critical area of inquiry. The purpose of this dissertation is to describe how farmers in Vermont, in the Northeastern U.S., think about climate change, and how their experiences and perceptions influence engagement with adaptation or mitigation activities. To this end, my research questions included: (1) what are farmers already doing …

Examination Of The Effects Breed And Nutrition Have On The Milk Protein Profile Produced By Lactating Dairy Cattle, Rinske Tacoma

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Milk is a highly nutritious natural product and research over the last 10 years has proven that these milk proteins not only provide a rich source of amino acids to the consumer but also contains many bioactive proteins and peptides known to exert biological activity benefitting human health. In this research, proteomic methods were first used to characterize the low abundance proteome within the skim milk fraction produced by Holstein and Jersey dairy cows maintained under the same diet, management and environmental conditions. Milk samples were collected over a seven day period from six Holstein and six Jersey dairy cows. …

Resistance And Resilience: Latinx Migrant Farmworkers In The Northern Borderlands, Jessie Mazar

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Vermont prides itself on being a national role model in developing innovative models for community-supported, ecologically responsible agricultural practices. However, Vermont's largest sector of agriculture, the dairy industry, has increasingly relied on Latinx* migrant farm laborers who face significant challenges. Due to a lack of a year-round agricultural visa program, most farmworkers on Vermont's dairy farms are unable to receive proper documentation. This circumstance has a significant impact on migrant workers, particularly those living and working closer to the border, as those areas fall within federal jurisdiction of US immigration enforcement. In these borderlands, surveillance is intensified and so the …

Parent Preferences For Baby Formula In China And Potential Implications For U.S. Dairy Product Exports, Hao Cui

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

As the world's most populous country, with more than 16 million births every year, China has emerged as a large importer of baby formula. China's relaxation of the one-child policy, which was announced in 2015, is expected to increase the number of births significantly and therefore increase the demand for Chinese and imported baby formula. While information on parent preferences for baby formula is very important for understanding and predicting China's import demand for baby formula and other products used to produce baby formula, like milk powder, there are very limited empirical studies on Chinese parent preferences for baby formula …

Management Practices And Communication Strategies To Improve Milk Fat And Protein Content On Dairy Farms, Melissa Elizabeth Woolpert

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Dairy farmers in the Northeastern Unites States are paid based on the amount of fat and protein in their cows' milk, and improving fat and protein production is linked with improved financial sustainability for dairy farms. However, not all farmers are motivated to make changes to increase milk fat and protein production. Previous research has identified a positive correlation between a group of fatty acids, known as the de novo fatty acids, and the fat and protein content of bulk tank milk from commercial dairy farms. Therefore, the first objective of this research was to explore the relationship of farm …

Ecological Dynamics In Compost-Amended Soils And The Resulting Effects On Escherichia Coli Survival, Anya Cutler

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Escherichia coli (E. coli) are common and typically innocuous copiotrophic bacteria found in the mammalian gut microbiome. However, over the past 30 years, pathogenic E. coli have been responsible for several outbreaks of foodborne illness linked to contaminated produce. The introduction of Escherichia coli to an agricultural soil, via contaminated water, compost, or raw manure, exposes the bacterium to a medley of ecological forces not found in a mammalian gut environment. This study assesses a variety of abiotic and biotic soil factors that influence the ability of an "invasive" copiotrophic coliform bacterium to survive in compost-amended agricultural soil. The study …

An Analysis Of Agricultural Decision-Making For Phosphorus Runoff Reduction In The State Of Vermont, Bethany Brown

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Eutrophication, stimulated by phosphorous (P) runoff from landscapes, compromises water quality and can have long-term impacts on the aesthetics, recreation, property values, and drinkability of bodies of water around the world. In the State of Vermont, efforts are underway to control the amount of P entering Lake Champlain per standards set forth in the Federal Clean Water Act. Agriculture has been identified as a major contributor to excess P in the waterways and will be managed according to Act 64, the Vermont Water Quality Act. The studies presented in this paper will introduce two independent methodologies proposed to aid in …

Diversification Strategies And Contributions Of Coffee Income To Poverty Alleviation Among Smallholders In Northern Huehuetenango And Quiche Departments, Guatemala, Andrew Gerlicz

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

In the past two decades, Mesoamerican smallholder coffee farmers have had to confront several stressors and shocks, such as price crises and natural disasters, with debilitating impacts on the viability of their livelihoods. More recently, many farmers have suffered crop losses in the wake of the spread of coffee leaf rust disease, and researchers are predicting that some areas will become less suitable for coffee growing in the near future as a result of climate change. In response to these conditions and in the context of the withdrawal of the state from provision of agricultural services, development practitioners have mainly …

Importance Of Agricultural Systems As Multifunctional Landscapes, Flavio Sutti

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Agricultural landscapes provide our society with many benefits. While food production is the primary role of these landscapes, sociocultural and ecological benefits are also provided. However, the full scope of benefits that we obtain from agricultural landscapes are not always taken into account, and with the intensification of agricultural activities, more complex multifunctional landscapes are converted into simpler and less-functional landscapes. I used a heterogeneous agricultural landscape, the Champlain Valley of Vermont, as a case study to examine the interactions between landscape structure and the provision of landscape functions and services.

I analyzed sociocultural and production functions indices obtained via …

Making The Healthy Choice: Exploring Health Communication In The Food System, Emily Portman

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the Cooperative Extension System are organizations that serve the public and agricultural communities, respectively. Within these broad organizations are two groups of food systems professionals, registered dietitian nutritionists (RDNs) and Extension agents, who are utilizing communication as a critical point of access for health-related issues. Both groups of professionals negotiate organizational structure in order to construct their own health knowledge and, subsequently, communicate accurate information to their constituents. Understanding the ways that these professionals navigate their roles as health communicators are important for contributing to public discourse about how health knowledge is created …

Edge-Of-Field Water And Phosphorus Losses In Surface And Subsurface Agricultural Runoff, Laura B. Klaiber

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Quantifying effectiveness of soil management practices on surface and subsurface water quality at the field scale is becoming increasingly important in the Lake Champlain Basin and other agricultural watersheds. During 2012 and 2013, field plots (22.9 x 45.7 m) were established at the Lake Alice Wildlife Area in Chazy, NY to begin a long-term water quality monitoring study. Plots were established in a cool season grass field (1 ha) leased and managed by the William H. Miner Agricultural Research Institute in Chazy, NY. The soil type transitions from an excessively drained outwash soil on the upslope to a very poorly …