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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Climate-Smart Agriculture: Building Resilience For Women Farmers In Kalchebeshi, Nepal, Annika Ruben Oct 2019

Climate-Smart Agriculture: Building Resilience For Women Farmers In Kalchebeshi, Nepal, Annika Ruben

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This case study outlines women’s involvement in climate-smart agriculture and key climate adaptation strategies which are being implemented in the town of Kalchebeshi, Nepal. Kalchebeshi is considered a Resilient Mountain Village because of the town’s integrated approach to addressing climate change and building resilience for farmers. Key findings examined gender differences in farming responsibilities and the significance of farmers’ groups in women’s overall decision making and community involvement. Additionally, changes in water management and pesticide use have been shown to have a positive impact on the lives of women farmers in Kalchebeshi. This paper reinforces the importance of involving vulnerable …


Us County-Level Agricultural Crop Production Typology, Courtney R. Hammond Wagner, Meredith T. Niles, Eric D. Roy Aug 2019

Us County-Level Agricultural Crop Production Typology, Courtney R. Hammond Wagner, Meredith T. Niles, Eric D. Roy

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Objectives: Crop production is an important variable in social, economic and environmental analyses. There is an abundance of crop data available for the United States, but we lack a typology of county-level crop production that accounts for production similarities in counties across the country. We fill this gap with a county-level classification of crop production with ten mutually exclusive categories across the contiguous United States. Data description: To create the typology we ran a cluster analysis on acreage data for 21 key crops from the United States Department of Agriculture's 2012 Agricultural Census. Prior to clustering, we estimated undisclosed county …


Policy Options To Streamline The Carbon Market For Agricultural Nitrous Oxide Emissions, Meredith T. Niles, Hannah Waterhouse, Robert Parkhurst, Eileen L. Mclellan, Sara Kroopf Aug 2019

Policy Options To Streamline The Carbon Market For Agricultural Nitrous Oxide Emissions, Meredith T. Niles, Hannah Waterhouse, Robert Parkhurst, Eileen L. Mclellan, Sara Kroopf

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

The majority of emissions of nitrous oxide – a potent greenhouse gas (GHG) – are from agricultural sources, particularly nitrogen fertilizer applications. A growing focus on these emission sources has led to the development in the United States of GHG offset protocols that could enable payment to farmers for reducing fertilizer use or implementing other nitrogen management strategies. Despite the development of several protocols, the current regional scope is narrow, adoption by farmers is low, and policy implementation of protocols has a significant time lag. Here we utilize existing research and policy structures to propose an ‘umbrella’ approach for nitrogen …


Seeing Is Not Always Believing: Crop Loss And Climate Change Perceptions Among Farm Advisors, Meredith T. Niles, Sarah Wiener, Rachel E. Schattman, Gabrielle Roesch-Mcnally, Julian Reyes Mar 2019

Seeing Is Not Always Believing: Crop Loss And Climate Change Perceptions Among Farm Advisors, Meredith T. Niles, Sarah Wiener, Rachel E. Schattman, Gabrielle Roesch-Mcnally, Julian Reyes

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

As climate change is expected to significantly affect agricultural systems globally, agricultural farm advisors have been increasingly recognized as an important resource in helping farmers address these challenges. While there have been many studies exploring the climate change belief and risk perceptions as well as behaviors of both farmers and agricultural farm advisors, there are very few studies that have explored how these perceptions relate to actual climate impacts in agriculture. Here we couple survey data from United States Department of Agriculture farm service employees (n = 6, 514) with historical crop loss data across the United States to explore …


Flowering Resources Distract Pollinators From Crops: Model Predictions From Landscape Simulations, Charlie C. Nicholson, Taylor H. Ricketts, Insu Koh, Henrik G. Smith, Eric V. Lonsdorf, Ola Olsson Mar 2019

Flowering Resources Distract Pollinators From Crops: Model Predictions From Landscape Simulations, Charlie C. Nicholson, Taylor H. Ricketts, Insu Koh, Henrik G. Smith, Eric V. Lonsdorf, Ola Olsson

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Enhancing floral resources is a widely accepted strategy for supporting wild bees and promoting crop pollination. Planning effective enhancements can be informed with pollination service models, but these models should capture the behavioural and spatial dynamics of service-providing organisms. Model predictions, and hence management recommendations, are likely to be sensitive to these dynamics. We used two established models of pollinator foraging to investigate whether habitat enhancement improves crop visitation; whether this effect is influenced by pollinator foraging distance and landscape pattern; and whether behavioural detail improves model predictions. The more detailed central place foraging model better predicted variation in bee …


Does Household Capital Mediate The Uptake Of Agricultural Land, Crop, And Livestock Adaptations? Evidence From The Indo-Gangetic Plains (India), Sameer H. Shah, Courtney Hammond Wagner, Udita Sanga, Hogeun Park, Lia Helena Monteiro De Lima Demange, Carolina Gueiros, Meredith T. Niles Jan 2019

Does Household Capital Mediate The Uptake Of Agricultural Land, Crop, And Livestock Adaptations? Evidence From The Indo-Gangetic Plains (India), Sameer H. Shah, Courtney Hammond Wagner, Udita Sanga, Hogeun Park, Lia Helena Monteiro De Lima Demange, Carolina Gueiros, Meredith T. Niles

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Farmers in the Indo-Gangetic Plains produce much of the wheat and rice grown in India. However, food production and millions of farm-based livelihoods in this region will continue to be adversely affected by hydro-climatic change and variation, reduced land productivity, and declining groundwater levels. Thus, agricultural adaptations are essential for protecting and improving upon intersecting goals of food security, poverty alleviation, and wellbeing. Household “capital” (e.g., natural, human, financial, physical, and social) is commonly cited as an indicator of livelihood adaptability and innovation. We develop a series of mediated structural equation models to empirically evaluate the validity of capital as …


Farming Within Limits, Lindsay Barbieri, Sonya Ahamed, Sam Bliss Jan 2019

Farming Within Limits, Lindsay Barbieri, Sonya Ahamed, Sam Bliss

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Global agricultural production is alarmingly unsustainable. Manipulating living beings, their genetics, and entire ecosystems to produce food has always been a technological feat. Advancements in farming technology have made it possible to surpass critical thresholds of planetary sustainability. Technological change in agriculture generates tension between those who benefit and those who bear the costs. Agriculture produces more than enough to feed the world’s human population, but the global economy allocates food inequitably among people and redirects food to industrial feedlots, biofuel refineries, and the waste stream. Technical solutions alone cannot fix the underlying socioeconomic systems that produce unjust and unsustainable …


Following The Seed: Investigating Seed Saving And Network Creation In The Appalachian Region Of Southeastern Ohio, Molly Hicks Jan 2019

Following The Seed: Investigating Seed Saving And Network Creation In The Appalachian Region Of Southeastern Ohio, Molly Hicks

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Since the beginning of agriculture, seeds have been cultivated, saved, and exchanged by farmers each year to ensure the success of future crops adapted to local environments. Yet, over ninety percent of our diverse vegetable and fruit crop varieties have been lost due to the industrialization and commercialization of seeds. Industrial agriculture has caused a great homogenization of crop varieties, but locally adapted seeds and their seed savers do still exist on the fringe, and across the world. There is a small but growing body of research on agri-food networks in Western and developing countries where advocates are working to …