Agriculture 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 …

Legacy Effects Of Intercropping And Nitrogen Fertilization On Soil N Cycling, Nitrous Oxide Emissions, And The Soil Microbial Community In Tropical Maize Production, Lucas P. Canisares, Hanna J. Poffenbarger, Eoin L. Brodie, Patrick O. Sorensen, Ulas Karaoz, Daniel M. Villegas, Jacobo Arango, Letusa Momesso, Carlos Alexandre Costa Crusciol, Heitor Cantarella

Plant and Soil Sciences Faculty Publications

Maize-forage grasses intercropping systems have been increasingly adopted by farmers because of their capacity to recycle nutrients, provide mulch, and add C to soil. However, grasses have been shown to increase nitrous oxide (N₂O) emissions. Some tropical grasses cause biological nitrification inhibition (BNI) which could mitigate N₂O emissions in the maize cycle but the reactions of the N cycle and the microbial changes that explain the N₂O emissions are little known in such intercropping systems. With this in mind, we explored intercropping of forage grasses (Brachiaria brizantha and Brachiaria humidicola) with distinct …

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.

Sources Of Variation In Bourbon Whiskey Barrels: A Review, Jarrad Gollihue, Victoria G. Pook, Seth Debolt

Horticulture Faculty Publications

Oak barrels serve two purposes in the production of distilled spirits: storage containers and reaction vessels. It is the latter function which bestows barrel aged spirits with their unique and highly sought after flavour profiles. However, achieving consistent flavour profiles between barrels is notoriously difficult as no two barrels are comprised of the same source of oak. Source variation is due to a range of factors, beginning with the genetic and topographical background of the oak tree from which the barrel staves originate, the spatial region of the tree from which the stave was taken and continuing through each step …

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 …

Bhlh Iridoid Synthesis 3 Is A Member Of A Bhlh Gene Cluster Regulating Terpenoid Indole Alkaloid Biosynthesis In Catharanthus Roseus, Sanjay Kumar Singh, Barunava Patra, Priyanka Paul, Yongliang Liu, Sitakanta Pattanaik, Ling Yuan

Kentucky Tobacco Research and Development Center Faculty Publications

Basic helix‐loop‐helix (bHLH) transcription factors (TFs) are key regulators of plant specialized metabolites, including terpenoid indole alkaloids (TIAs) in Catharanthus roseus. Two previously characterized subgroup‐IVa bHLH TFs, BIS1 (bHLH Iridoid Synthesis 1) and BIS2 regulate iridoid biosynthesis in the TIA pathway. We reanalyzed the recently updated C. roseus genome sequence and discovered that BIS1 and BIS2 are clustered on the same genomic scaffold with a previously uncharacterized bHLH gene, designated as BIS3. Only a few bHLH gene clusters have been studied to date. Comparative analysis of 49 genome sequences from different plant lineages revealed the presence of analogous …