Agriculture Commons^™

Which Factors Influence Consumer Organic Specialty Bakery Product Taste Ratings?, Tatiana Drugova, Kynda R. Curtis

All Current Publications

In this fact sheet, we compare consumer taste ratings for organic and conventional specialty bakery products and analyze what factors explain the differences. These products are typically consumed for pleasure and are more expensive than mainstream baked goods. However, consumers have high quality expectations, including taste, which may be an issue if not satisfactory. Understanding factors that impact consumer taste rating for organic specialty bakery products can help identify what might be done to improve taste perceptions/expectations and the success of organic specialty bakery/pastry products.

Responses Of Soil Heterotrophic Respiration And Microbial Biomass To Organic And Conventional Production Systems, Kripa Dhakal, Madhav Parajuli, Siyang Jian, Jianwei Li, Dilip Nandwani

Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Faculty Research

The effects of organic and conventional production systems on crop productivity have been greatly explored, but their effects on soil microbial processes were often neglected. A comparative field study of organic and conventional production systems was conducted at the Tennessee State University research farm to determine soil heterotrophic respiration and microbial biomass carbon. Leafy green vegetables were grown in a conventional production system in an open field, and they were grown in an organic production system, using three different row covers (agribon cloth, insect net, and plastic), and in an open field. Soil samples (0-15cm) were collected from the two …

Usu Student Organic Farm, Usu Student Organic Farm

USU Student Organic Farm Newsletter

The semester has started! PSC 4900 is the Student Organic Farm practicum class, and this year’s students and some of the farm team met for our first class on Monday. Dr. Jennifer Reeve teaches the class and will be back at the end of September after mater­nity leave. This month Dr. Melanie Stock will lead the class in sampling the soil for next year’s farm field, calculating required nutrient ammendments, spreading compost and testing the irrigation system for the fall cover crop.

Meanwhile, the team is maintaining the fall crops, harvesting and preparing for the grand finale Harvest Festival coming …

Usu Student Organic Farm, Usu Student Organic Farm

USU Student Organic Farm Newsletter

Fall crops are coming up, and they’re amazing. We started digging up the potatoes today and it is so crazy to see how many potatoes can grow from planting a chunk of potato with a couple of eyes on it! Some of these plants have two pounds of potatoes growing off of them. The pumpkins are already enormous, and the butternut squash are still ripening but are really good-sized already. The melons are taking longer than expected, but look great. Our one warm-season failure seems to be the eggplant- but watch them produce like crazy now that I’ve said that. …

Usu Student Organic Farm, Usu Student Organic Farm

USU Student Organic Farm Newsletter

We’re getting ready for volunteer season! We’re so thankful to our regulars who have been so much fun to have on the farm, and whose work has been a huge contribution to the farm’s success this summer. Now we’re getting back to lovely mornings and evenings, and are going to plant vegetables that have to over winter, clean up our perennial berry patches, repair and winterize the hoop houses and other farm structures, prep the field for cover crops, etc. - all while making sure our baskets are abundant and selling veggies at the farm stand and at the USU …

Usu Student Organic Farm, Usu Student Organic Farm

USU Student Organic Farm Newsletter

Six weeks until the first frost date means we are done planting. We put in some beets and radishes today just on the off chance they’re ready in time for the final week of CSA shares (38 and 40 days to maturity, respectively). Otherwise, we’ve got fall broc­coli and kohlrabi in the ground, a new asian green called Shungiku (see the recipe be­low), rutabaga, fresh kale, and lettuce starts planted and on the menu for September.

Usu Student Organic Farm, Usu Student Organic Farm

USU Student Organic Farm Newsletter

It’s all coming together! With a few serious harvests under our belts now, we’re getting our groove. We’re harvesting some things every day now! A day or two of growth turns a green pepper yellow, a green tomato red, a yellow tomato overripe, a squash into a gourd and a cucumber into a zucchini. That last isn’t really true, but you’ve probably noticed the big seeds and sorry about that! We hope you’re enjoying your big baskets; they’ll be abundant for a good while yet.

Point-Of-Sale Specific Willingness To Pay For Quality-Differentiated Beef, Kar Ho Lim, Michael Vassalos, Michael R. Reed

Agricultural Economics Faculty Publications

Despite the growing interest of producers and consumers toward grass-fed, local, and organic beef, the supply chain for these products to reach consumers is not always clear-cut. Among the available options are direct-to-consumers and the conventional food supply chain. Although consumers may pay a premium for beef differentiated by quality attributes, the willingness to pay (WTP) difference across point-of-sales is unclear. In this study, we contrast the WTPs for conventional, grass-fed, local, and organic beef by brick-and-mortar supermarkets (B&Ms), farmers’ markets, and via online stores. We conduct a choice experiment with a nationwide online sample of American consumers. The findings …

Usu Student Organic Farm, Usu Student Organic Farm

USU Student Organic Farm Newsletter

So much food! It’s so fun to see it! The cabbage, broccoli, early curcubits, tomato, pepper and tomatillo plants are loaded, and the melons, fall squash, beans and potatoes are looking super promising. We have a shed wall covered in garlic, and about 20 lb. of broccoli in the cooler, with more to harvest. We’ve got a good rhythm now with reseeding beets and radishes, and are expecting them and car­rots in August and hopefully Sept. It’s also fall planting month, and over the next two weeks we’ll be transplanting more Asian greens, lettuce, mizuna, arugula, broccoli and kohlrabi as …

Usu Student Organic Farm, Usu Student Organic Farm

USU Student Organic Farm Newsletter

We’ve moved back into mitigation mode! It’s nice that the weather and pest situation in May and June was manageable- we already had our hands full with field logistics, bed preparation, planting, weeding and establishing harvesting and processing routines. Now that we’ve got the basics fairly under control, we can better respond to increasing daytime and nighttime temps, and the pests and weeds that come with it. In the last two weeks, we’ve used Neem Oil for aphids, Bacillus Thuringiensus (B.T.), for cabbage moth caterpillars, and tonight are spraying Pyrethrin to stay ahead of Utah’s 2018 grasshopper plague. All of …

Usu Student Organic Farm, Usu Student Organic Farm

USU Student Organic Farm Newsletter

Anyone reading this is in touch with your culinary creative side, having committed for a whole summer to weekly making the most of whatever produce the student farm can offer you. We salute you! Some fun stuff is coming up soon and we’re getting the hang of succession planting.

Usu Student Organic Farm, Usu Student Organic Farm

USU Student Organic Farm Newsletter

Many hands make light work, as the saying goes. We’ve had so much volunteer help, including friends, CSA members and their kids. Now that we’re getting some skills under our belts, we’ve been able to provide some help to other grow­ers, too, which is fun. We’ve helped set up irrigation and low tunnels for research plots, and planted and pounded posts with the permaculture garden team at the UCC property near Logan Canyon. In a few weeks we’ll put out a call to help planting for the fall, and in the meantime, we can always use a hand with weed­ing …

Usu Student Organic Farm, Usu Student Organic Farm

USU Student Organic Farm Newsletter

Learning from the pros is solid gold for beginning farmers, and at USU we have access to some of the most knowledgeable ag specialists in the state, as well as successful farmers and gardners throughout the community. We’re really getting a lesson in the juggling act that is farming, and we are lucky to have experts to talk to as we work things out. There is so much to learn about soil fertility, pest and weed management, choosing crop varieties and working out how to cultivate them well, planting successions, irrigating, etc. Meanwhile, we are working with curve balls from …

Usu Student Organic Farm, Usu Student Organic Farm

USU Student Organic Farm Newsletter

We’ve got water! It was pretty funny when we finally got the irrigation system up and running Saturday evening of the holiday weekend, and the sky opened up. But we’re all really glad to have it ready for all those babies after a baking hot day! We’ve got the warm weather crops in, including squashes, tomatoes, tomatillos, eggplant and peppers, and melons will be planted tomorrow. We’re lovingly encouraging the tail end of the cool crops to make some food already - you may have noticed your bokchoi is delicious, and so did some cabbage fam­ily loving beetles, who are …

Usu Student Organic Farm, Usu Student Organic Farm

USU Student Organic Farm Newsletter

The field is almost fully planted! Thanks to a little help from our friends at the Greenville Research Farm, we’ll have squash, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers and tomatillos in the ground this week, and be done with our most intensive plant­ing! Dr. Dan Drost’s team from Greenville Research Farm, James Frisby, Jewely Anna Swensen, Christina Nolasco and Maegen Lewis, spent hours with us set­ting up our squash and pumpkin beds with plastic mulch and a drip irrigation system last week and this week, and we had some help with tilling and mowing from Eric Galloway and his technician, Jayden Gunnell.

Farmer Perceptions And Behaviors Related To Wildlife And On-Farm Conservation Actions, Sara M. Kross, Katherine P. Ingram, Rachael F. Long, Meredith T. Niles

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Conservation Letters published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Policy makers are increasingly encouraging farmers to protect or enhance habitat on their farms for wildlife conservation. However, a lack of knowledge of farmers’ opinions toward wildlife can lead to poor integration of conservation measures. We surveyed farmers to assess their perceptions of ecosystem services and disservices from perching birds, raptors, and bats—three taxa commonly targeted by conservation measures. The majority of farmers thought that perching birds and bats were beneficial for insect pest control and that raptors were beneficial for vertebrate pest control; however, fruit farmers viewed perching birds more negatively than …

Tetracycline And Sulfonamide Antibiotic Resistance Genes In Soils From Nebraska Organic Farming Operations, Marylynn Cadena, Lisa M. Durso, Daniel N. Miller, Heidi M. Waldrip, B. L. Castleberry, Rhae A. Drijber, Charles S. Wortmann

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

There is widespread agreement that agricultural antibiotic resistance should be reduced, however, it is unclear from the available literature what an appropriate target for reduction would be. Organic farms provide a unique opportunity to disentangle questions of agricultural antibiotic drug use from questions of antibiotic resistance in the soil. In this study, soil was collected from 12 certified organic farms in Nebraska, evaluated for the presence of tetracycline and sulfonamide resistance genes (n = 15 targets), and correlated to soil physical, chemical, and biological parameters. Tetracycline and sulfonamide antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) were found in soils from all 12 …

The Farm Newsletter, Usu Student Organic Farm

USU Student Organic Farm Newsletter

Here at the farm we are about as anxious for the tomatoes to ripen as people can be. However, they just don't seem to be picking up the color that they should be at this point. One method for getting tomatoes to ripen is to cut them off the plant in bunches with some of the stem still attached and to let them sit/hang in a warm place out of direct sunlight. This should ripen them in about a week's time. We are going to try this with a few of our many many green tomatoes in the hope that …

The Farm Newsletter, Usu Student Organic Farm

USU Student Organic Farm Newsletter

Upon arrival at the farm early this morning, many of us were surprised to find that many of the plants were covered with frost. Aside from making harvest a very cold experience, frost us usually fatal to hot season produce such as squash and tomatoes. However, one technique that is often used by commercial farms to prevent frost damage is watering in the evening when frost is expected. This helps because water is capable of absorbing large amounts of heat (and releasing it). Ayla, the new farm manager, watered the field last night, and we have her to thank for …

The Farm Newsletter, Usu Student Organic Farm

USU Student Organic Farm Newsletter

School has officially started with fall semester classes. At this time of year several changes take place. Along with time changes in CSA pickups, now is the time when we begin the transition from the current to the new farm production manager. Joe (the current manager) is still with us, and he will continue to provide support and instruction. However many of our fall activities will be overseen by the production manager for next year. Ayla has been one of our support interns this summer and has been hoping and working to obtain this position. She is excited by what …

The Farm Newsletter, Usu Student Organic Farm

USU Student Organic Farm Newsletter

A Note on Carrots

Included in your shares with the carrots are the carrot greens. Though usually discarded, carrot tops are actually edible and highly nutritious. They can been eaten raw in salads, cooked into soups, or used in a variety of other ways. Important to note however is that due to the natural biological processes in the plant, if your carrot tops are left attached to the roots for an extended time they will make your carrots soft. This is because the plant is still alive and the leaves are still pulling moisture from the roots.

The Farm Newsletter, Usu Student Organic Farm

USU Student Organic Farm Newsletter

Due to the start of fall semester, the majority of our farm workers will not be available during regular pickup hours. Starting the week of August 29 - September 3, pick-up time for all CSA members will permanently change to Saturday from 10:00am to 12:00pm. All pick-ups will take place at the farm, which is located at 1750 N 800 E in Logan.

The Farm Newsletter, Usu Student Organic Farm

USU Student Organic Farm Newsletter

Earlier this year the farm applied for a grant from blue goes green in order to build and supply a new farm stand. We are proud to say that after having been awarded $200 for the purpose, the farm stand is now complete. As CSA members, you may not often see the farm stand, but instead pick up your produce either at the much larger pick-up area of the farm or on campus in the NR building.

The farm stand is used on Thursdays from 11am to 1pm to sell produce on campus to non-CSA members. Most of our produce …

The Farm Newsletter, Usu Student Organic Farm

USU Student Organic Farm Newsletter

Coriander Beet Chips. Recipe by NakedBeet.

The Farm Newsletter, Usu Student Organic Farm

USU Student Organic Farm Newsletter

Gus (goose) is a sophomore at USU majoring in Plant Science. He is originally from Brazil but he has also spent time living in central Utah. He enjoys being outside and the air conditioning inside of buildings often makes him cold. Gus loves to go camping and rock climbing when he is not working on the farm. Gus grew up farming with his family and plans to work as a crop consultant assisting other farmers to better their harvests and practices. He loves to make jokes and has been a fun and valuable addition to the farm this summer. He …

The Farm Newsletter, Usu Student Organic Farm

USU Student Organic Farm Newsletter

Many of you have noticed and probably identified the hanging garlic in the pick-up area at the farm. After garlic is harvested it needs to undergo the process of curing in which it hangs/lays in an area with good air circulation out of direct sunlight. This allows the garlic to dry out slightly, which has several effects. First it allows the garlic to be kept in storage without rotting or molding; it allows the bulb to pull the remaining energy from the leaves as they dry; and finally it, in my opinion, intensifies the garlic's flavor. This curing takes place …

The Farm Newsletter, Usu Student Organic Farm

USU Student Organic Farm Newsletter

Here at the farm we are in a transitional period where the strawberries are slowing down and the raspberries are just starting up. There are not enough of either to provide for all CSA shares alone, however there are enough between them to do so. This week, if you arrive/arrived early enough, you have or will have the choice between either a bowl of raspberries or of strawberries. If you come at the end of the pick-up time there may only be one kind left. We hope everyone is happy with whatever they received.

The Farm Newsletter, Usu Student Organic Farm

USU Student Organic Farm Newsletter

Pick up on Tuesday of next week (July 5th) will be moved to Wednesday (July 6th) in order to accommodate those share holders who are out of town for Independence Day. Please email if this creates conflicts so separate arragngements can be made.

The Farm Newsletter, Usu Student Organic Farm

USU Student Organic Farm Newsletter

Basil-Mint Sauce. Recipe by http://www.eatingwell.com

This healthy herb sauce recipe brings together mint, basil and ground coriander. Use as a healthy sauce for topping chicken, fish or pasta.

Comparison Of Synthetic Versus Organic Herbicides/Insecticides On Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi In Abelmoschus Esculentus, Ariel Freidenreich

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) play a crucial role in improving the growth of a vast majority of plants. Past researchers have discovered that agricultural practices have a significant negative effect on the diversity of AMF. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi are reported to enhance plant nutrient uptake, stress tolerance, and soil aggregate formation which are key aspects of productive low-input farming. The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of four pesticides on the ability of AMF to colonize the roots of okra plants (Abelmoschus esculentus). The pesticides being tested include two synthetic chemicals (glyphosate and carbaryl) and …