Food Science Commons^™

Our Gendered Food Chain, Jasmine T. Colahan

SURGE

Over the past four decades, the number of women-operated farms has nearly doubled. Including both primary and secondary operators, one million women make up thirty percent of all U.S. farmers.

Headlines such as “Females Take the Reins,” “Meet the New face of Agriculture,” “Old McDonald Might Be a Lady” demonstrate this gender shift. And, it is true in my life too. As I worked on the Painted Turtle Farm this summer, the majority of my role models, co-workers, and mentors working in agriculture, whether rural or urban, were primarily women. [excerpt]

Slow Food: From Farm To Healthy Body, Hannah L. Ruhl

Honors College

Slow Food is a movement devoted to the preservation and promotion of personal, environmental and community health through lifestyle changes which focus on good, clean and fair food. Good refers to food that is healthy and nutritious for the body. Food grown sustainably as in organic agriculture contains higher levels of beneficial compounds such as vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals. Clean food contains no toxic or harmful compounds that can cause detrimental effects on health. Pesticides and other chemicals are often used in food production; as a result they are found in the final product and are often detected in the …

Yield Gap Analysis With Local To Global Relevance—A Review, Martin K. Van Ittersum, Kenneth Cassman, Patricio Grassini, Joost Wolf, Pablo Tittonell, Zvi Hochman

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Yields of crops must increase substantially over the coming decades to keep pace with global food demand driven by population and income growth. Ultimately global food production capacity will be limited by the amount of land and water resources available and suitable for crop production, and by biophysical limits on crop growth. Quantifying food production capacity on every hectare of current farmland in a consistent and transparent manner is needed to inform decisions on policy, research, development and investment that aim to affect future crop yield and land use, and to inform on-ground action by local farmers through their knowledge …