Life Sciences Commons^™

Incentivizing Wellness Through Community Supported Agriculture: Reflections On Shareholder Impacts Of An Employer-Based Csa Voucher Program, Jairus J. Rossi, Timothy A. Woods

Agricultural Economics Faculty Publications

Community supported agriculture (CSA) programs are emerging as popular consumer options for pro­duce acquisition. While many researchers have dis­cussed the impacts of CSA on economies, commu­nities, and the environment, others are interested in documenting how produce-based CSA shapes health. In this paper, we evaluate whether and to what extent CSA incentive programs, funded by diverse employer groups in central Kentucky 2015–2018, impact shareholder wellness. To evaluate impact, we use two distinct types of data: we com­pare shareholders’ perceived frequency of food lifestyle behaviors from pre- and post-season sur­veys, and we examine anonymized medical claims from a subset of these participants …

Cross-Sectional Association Of Toxoplasma Gondii Exposure With Bmi And Diet In Us Adults, Joel Cuffey, Christopher A. Lepczyk, Shuoli Zhao, Nicholas M. Fountain-Jones

Agricultural Economics Faculty Publications

Toxoplasmosis gondii exposure has been linked to increased impulsivity and risky behaviors, which has implications for eating behavior. Impulsivity and risk tolerance is known to be related with worse diets and a higher chance of obesity. There is little known, however, about the independent link between Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) exposure and diet-related outcomes. Using linear and quantile regression, we estimated the relationship between T. gondii exposure and BMI, total energy intake (kcal), and diet quality as measured by the Health Eating Index-2015 (HEI) among 9,853 adults from the 2009–2014 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. …

Lessons To Be Learned In Adoption Of Autonomous Equipment For Field Crops, James Lowenberg-Deboer, Karl Behrendt, Melf-Hinrich Ehlers, Carl R. Dillon, Andreas Gabriel, Iona Yuelu Huang, Ian Kumwenda, Tyler Mark, Andreas Meyer-Aurich, Gabor Milics, Kehinde Oluseyi Olagunju, Søren Marcus Pedersen, Jordan M. Shockley, David Rose

Agricultural Economics Faculty Publications

Autonomous equipment for crop production is on the verge of technical and economic feasibility, but government regulation may slow its adoption. Key regulatory issues include requirements for on-site human supervision, liability for autonomous machine error, and intellectual property in robotic learning. As an example of the impact of regulation on the economic benefits of autonomous crop equipment, analysis from the United Kingdom suggests that requiring 100% on-site human supervision almost wipes out the economic benefits of autonomous crop equipment for small and medium farms and increases the economies-of-scale advantage of larger farms.

Grocery Food Taxes And U.S. County Obesity And Diabetes Rates, Lingxiao Wang, Yuqing Zheng, Steven Buck, Diansheng Dong, Harry M. Kaiser

Agricultural Economics Faculty Publications

BACKGROUND: Grocery food taxes represent a stable tax revenue stream for state and municipal government during times of adverse economic shocks such as that observed under the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Previous research, however, suggests a possible mechanism through which grocery taxes may adversely affect health. Our objectives are to document the spatial and temporal variation in grocery taxes and to empirically examine the statistical relationship between county-level grocery taxes and obesity and diabetes.

METHODS: We collect and assemble a novel national dataset of annual county and state-level grocery taxes from 2009 through 2016. We link this data to …

Productivity And Efficiency Difference Among Kentucky Grain Farms, Ahmed Yahya Hussein

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

This paper attempts to estimate productivity and efficiency for Kentucky grain farms by applying a two-stage Date Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and DEA-based Malmquist method. The study covers the years 1999-2015. Also, productivity and efficiency testing hypotheses among different farm sizes and years are estimated. In the first step, productivity and efficiency indices are estimated through deterministic DEA. In the second stage, a panel regression is run with exogenous variables to explain the productivity and efficiency variation. In general small farms were found to be the least scale efficient compared to mid-sized and large farms, even though the results show overall …

Two Essays On Food Environment, Nutrition, And Food Insecurity, Suliman Abdulaziz Almojel

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

A healthy food environment is fundamental to good health. It contributes to the reduction of obesity and the development of healthy eating habits. In spite of this, many people in the United States (US) have been hypnotized to become obese due to the current food environment. Recently, the US has consistently ranked high in the world in terms of obesity. The rising rate is symptomatic of consuming unhealthy diets. Besides, the double-edged crisis of the US food environment and obesity poses a major threat to food security and public health. Therefore, studying the US food environment is important to sustain …

Incorporation Of Summer Annual Mixtures Into Grazing Systems In Kentucky, Kelly Marie Mercier

Theses and Dissertations--Plant and Soil Sciences

Utilizing summer annual grass-legume forage mixtures has the potential to improve forage yield and nutritive characteristics, and/or animal performance during times when cool-season pasture growth is limited by high temperatures. Legumes can utilize atmospheric nitrogen, which can increase crude protein and forage digestibility in mixtures. As nitrogen application generally improves both the yield and nutritive characteristics of summer annual forages, but can have a negative effect on legume competitiveness, nitrogen fertilizer recommendations for legume-containing summer annual mixtures are not well established.

Two experiments were conducted to determine the feasibility of utilizing summer annual mixtures in Kentucky, USA. The first experiment …