Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Emulating Agricultural Disease Management: Comparing Risk Preferences Between Industry Professionals And Online Participants Using Experimental Gaming Simulations And Paired Lottery Choice Surveys, Eric M. Clark, Scott C. Merrill, Luke Trinity, Gabriela Bucini, Nicholas Cheney, Ollin Langle-Chimal, Trisha Shrum, Christopher Koliba, Asim Zia, Julia M. Smith

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Mitigating the spread of disease is crucial for the well-being of agricultural production systems. Implementing biosecurity disease prevention measures can be expensive, so producers must balance the costs of biosecurity investments with the expected benefits of reducing the risk of infections. To investigate the risk associated with this decision making process, we developed an online experimental game that simulates biosecurity investment allocation of a pork production facility during an outbreak. Participants are presented with several scenarios that vary the visibility of the disease status and biosecurity protection implemented at neighboring facilities. Certain rounds allowed participants to spend resources to reduce …

Farm Benchmarking: The Application Of Business, Conservation And Labor Indicators, Mark Cannella, Sara Ziegler,, Qingbin Wang, Mary Peabody, Thomas Leahey, Heather M. Darby

USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Center

Farm benchmarking programs will move Vermont’s food system towards important sustainability outcomes by establishing enhanced monitoring of priority indicators and facilitating the adoption of best practices. Farmers, researchers, policy agencies and development professionals agree there is a lack of regular and consistent data available to guide private and public initiatives. This paper identifies and contextualizes over forty priority indicators capable of measuring business performance, conservation, farm labor and community development.

Benchmarking methods need to be adapted to better represent the diversity of enterprises present in Vermont’s agricultural portfolio. The integration of University Extension objectives with food systems research priorities can …

Operationalizing Embeddedness For Sustainability In Local And Regional Food Systems, Joe Ament, Daniel Tobin, Scott Merrill, Caitlin Morgan, Cheryl Morse, Tung Liu, Amy Trubek

USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Center

Agricultural systems are deeply embedded in social processes and the institutions that govern them. Measuring these processes and understanding the extent of that embeddedness is critical to crafting policy for sustainable agricultural systems. The bulk of measurement in sustainability research, however, focuses on economic and environmental indicators such as farm profitability and water quality. Since policy is most often aimed at what is measured, it tends to focus on issues like price, production, and market access. And while those are important, policies aimed at social issues such as community reciprocity are often outside the scope of policy design.

The gap …

The Farm-Community Nexus: Metrics For Social, Economic, And Environmental Sustainability Of Agritourism And Direct Farm Sales In Vermont, Lisa Chase, Gillian L. Galford, Jane Kolodinsky, Daniel Tobin, Eric Bishop Von Wettberg, Amy Kelsey, Susanna Baxley, Christopher Brittain, Josiah Taylor

USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Center

Viable working landscapes, vibrant communities, and healthy ecosystems are the building blocks of sustainable food systems. Small and medium farms are connective tissue, creating a system that is greater than the sum of its parts by linking consumers to producers and promoting environmental stewardship. Our approach considers sustainability through connections between farms, their communities, and visitors within an agritourism framework, including on-farm experiences, direct sales of agricultural products, and farmer-consumer interactions at markets. The goal is to contribute to the understanding, operationalization, and integration of metrics built on the ideals that viable, sustainable, and resilient food systems must support social, …

Master's Project: The Green Burial Movement & Conservation Burial Grounds, Katherine B. Berdan

Rubenstein School Masters Project Publications

This Master’s project investigates the green burial movement and its relevance as a tool for land conservation organizations. This movement has the potential to change the standard cemetery landscape in the United States by informing consumers of alternative practices and materials that support natural environmental processes and sustainable land management practices. Until a decade ago, the green burial movement had largely taken place at the community and individual level. It is now an established and growing national movement with certifying organizations, standards and practices, and strategic goals. Opportunities exist within this movement to develop partnerships between the burial grounds and …

Soaking Up Stormwater Through Education And Stewardship In The Lake Champlain Basin And Beyond, Lake Champlain Sea Grant, University Of Vermont Extension

Lake Champlain Sea Grant Institute

The health of Lake Champlain and other waterbodies in the Lake Champlain basin, which lies within portions of Vermont, New York and Quebec, are negatively impacted by nonpoint sources of pollution, including phosphorus, nitrogen, sediments, chloride, and bacteria. All of this pollution is carried to waterbodies in stormwater runoff. Thus, it is critical that everyone understand what stormwater is, and how to help clean it and reduce its volume before it enters local waterways.

Stormwater is water from rainfall and melting snow or ice that moves over the land, collecting pollutants as it makes its way to lakes, ponds, streams …

A Cross-Cultural, Participatory Approach For Measuring And Cultivating Resilience On Small And Medium Farms, Hans Estrin, Walter Poleman, Aura M. Alonso-Rodríguez, Edgardo Gonzalez, Maria A. Juncos-Gautier, Chistopher Nytch, Ethan Thompson

USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Center

One of the greatest leverage points in fostering the transition to sustainability can be found in the realm of food systems. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into sharp focus the critical importance of small farm resilience to the well-being of communities around the world. We explored the role of small and medium farms in promoting sustainable social-agricultural systems, and investigated how the resilience of these farms can be both measured and amplified. W e integrated concepts from the fields of food systems sustainability and resilience, agroecology, and positive deviance to identify indicators that can help measure and track farm resilience. …

Amplifying Agroecology In Vermont: Principles And Processes To Foster Food Systems Sustainability, Martha Caswell, Rebecca Maden, Nils Mccune, V. Ernesto Mendez, Gabriela Bucini, Janica Anderzen, Victor Izzo, Stephanie E. Hurley, Rachelle K. Gould, Joshua W. Faulkner, Maria A. Juncos-Gautier

USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Center

Agroecology is grounded in principles that support transitions toward economic, social and ecological sustainability and proposes that real and lasting change will require a significant transformation of our agri-food systems. Evidence for agroecology’s potential continues to grow, both through word of mouth by farmers and social movements, and through recent scientific assessments of its performance. With endorsements from the Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), national governments in both the global north and south, and social movements, it is developing the web of ‘thick legitimacy’ required for even broader adoption (Montenegro de Wit & Iles, 2016). “...Agroecology …

Awareness Of Climate Change’S Impacts And Motivation To Adapt Are Not Enough To Drive Action: A Look Of Puerto Rican Farmers After Hurricane Maria, Luis Alexis Rodríguez-Cruz, Meredith T. Niles

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Understanding how perceptions around motivation, capacity, and climate change’s impacts relate to the adoption of adaptation practices in light of experiences with extreme weather events is important in assessing farmers’ adaptive capacity. However, very little of this work has occurred in islands, which may have different vulnerabilities and capacities for adaptation. Data of surveyed farmers throughout Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria (n = 405, 87% response rate) were used in a structural equation model to explore the extent to which their adoption of agricultural practices and management strategies was driven by perceptions of motivation, vulnerability, and capacity as a function …

Climate Impacts Associated With Reduced Diet Diversity In Children Across Nineteen Countries, Meredith T. Niles, Benjamin F. Emery, Serge Wiltshire, Molly E. Brown, Brendan Fisher, Taylor H. Ricketts

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

It is widely anticipated that climate change will negatively affect both food security and diet diversity. Diet diversity is especially critical for children as it correlates with macro and micronutrient intake important for child development. Despite these anticipated links, little empirical evidence has demonstrated a relationship between diet diversity and climate change, especially across large datasets spanning multiple global regions and with more recent climate data. Here we use survey data from 19 countries and more than 107 000 children, coupled with 30 years of precipitation and temperature data, to explore the relationship of climate to child diet diversity while …

Policy And Economic Variables Influencing Adoption Of Sustainable Electrification In Rural Sub-Saharan Africa, Payne William Morgan

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Limited access to electricity remains a primary constraint to economic growth and the improvement of livelihoods throughout sub-Saharan Africa. In rural areas, electricity access is especially sparse. The reasons for the scarcity of electricity supply in the region are well documented, with low population density, limited household incomes, and poor regulatory institutions compounding to often make the investment of expanding electricity access result in poor or risky economic returns. However, the declining cost of solar PV and mandates for clean energy development throughout the region have created new channels for bringing electricity supply in potentially more cost-effective ways.Despite these macro …

The Feasibility Of Over-Summer Snow Storage At The Craftsbury Outdoor Center, Craftsbury Vt, Hannah Sarah Weiss

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Climate change increases the unpredictability of winter weather and threatens the future of nordic skiing. Ski centers at high elevation and high latitude have employed over-summer snow storage, a climate change adaptation strategy, to ensure a consistent start-date to their winter ski season. Over-summer snow storage involves making a large pile of snow during winter and storing the snow beneath protective layers, such as wood chips or foam panels, to impede melt throughout the summer and fall. When ready to open the ski season, the ski center uncovers the pile and spreads the snow to create trails. Though many nordic …

Enhancing Ecosystem Services And Climate Resilience In Agriculture: A Transdisciplinary Approach, Alissa White

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

A complex of social, economic and environmental factors influences agricultural management in the northeastern US. Farmers often balance goals of farm viability, environmental stewardship, and resilience to climate change, while also under public pressure to enhance the provisioning of ecosystem services from their landscapes. Changes in farm management have been identified as cost-effective ways to address both local water quality issues, and global anthropogenic influences on greenhouse gas concentrations. Individual decision-making on the part of farmers that determines the fate of ecosystem service provisioning from agroecosystems, placing increasing importance on understanding how policy, outreach and research can support farmers’ capacity …

Coastal Resilience At The Nexus Of Food, Energy, And Water: An Interdisciplinary Perspective For Resilience Planning, Kristin Raub

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Global climate change poses increased threats to coastal communities. The resilience of coastal communities relies on the protection and continued availability of essential services such as food, energy, and water (FEW) systems. However, the intersection of FEW nexus research and coastal resilience planning has not been well explored. This dissertation seeks to further the goal of operationalizing resilience planning by examining the usefulness of resilience tools and toolkits that have been developed in recent years and exploring how the FEW nexus approach has been applied to coastal resilience planning in both academic and grey literature. The first chapter provides the …