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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Restoring Relationship: How The Methodologies Of Wangari Maathai And The Green Belt Movement In Post-Colonial Kenya Achieve Environmental Healing And Women's Empowerment, Casey L. Wagner Dec 2016

Restoring Relationship: How The Methodologies Of Wangari Maathai And The Green Belt Movement In Post-Colonial Kenya Achieve Environmental Healing And Women's Empowerment, Casey L. Wagner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The effects of the colonial project in Kenya created multi-faceted damages to the land and indigenous people-groups. Using the lens of ecofeminism, this study examines the undergirding structures that produce systems such as colonization that oppress and destroy land, people, and other beings. By highlighting the experience of the Kikuyu people within the Kenyan colonial program, the innovative and ingenious response of Wangari Maathai's Green Belt Movement proves to be a relevant and effective counter to women's disempowerment and environmental devastation in a post-colonial nation. The approach of the Green Belt Movement offers a unique and accessible method for empowering …


Social Ecological Food Systems: Sustainability Lessons From Maine Dairy Networks, Julia B. Mcguire Aug 2016

Social Ecological Food Systems: Sustainability Lessons From Maine Dairy Networks, Julia B. Mcguire

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Milk production has played an integral role in the culture, landscape, and economy of Maine’s agriculture. Maine dairy farmers have faced numerous sustainability challenges to economic, environmental, and social aspects of their industry. Like many other complex social ecological systems, the Maine dairy industry faces a gap between scientific knowledge and actionable management or policy. A cultural dichotomy exists between conventional and organic farming. Shifting the focus from this binary, metrics such as social capital may play a key role in solving sustainability issues. Difficulties arise in the governance of complex social ecological systems when the scales of assessment, management, …


Temporal And Spatial Influences On South Dakota Farm Economies Of Size, Henry Brown Jan 2016

Temporal And Spatial Influences On South Dakota Farm Economies Of Size, Henry Brown

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Census of Agriculture data are evaluated to test for economies of size of South Dakota farms. Economies of size occur when per-unit costs decrease as the size of a firm increases. This research measures technical economies of size, which assume that all firms pay identical input prices and receive identical output prices. The dependent variable of the model is expenses per dollar of sales. This is a typical measure of efficiency in agricultural statistics. The data come from the four prior Census of Agriculture years, 1997, 2002, 2007, and 2012. A state-wide model and a county-wide model were developed to …


Relationship Of Grain Stocks And Farmer Marketings, Tyler Holmquist Jan 2016

Relationship Of Grain Stocks And Farmer Marketings, Tyler Holmquist

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research explores the relationship between quarterly grain stocks and monthly grain marketings. Reviewing when, how, and why stocks move from on-farm and off-farm inventories, an interpretation of quarterly commodity disappearance and crop marketings is formed. An explanatory model is first developed for farmer marketings, where price expectations are used to assess market signals to change ownership of crops. The model is applied to South Dakota corn, soybeans, and wheat from 1985 through 2015. The subsequent analysis contributes to a model that explains quarterly changes in stocks in terms of supply levels and the expected effect from marketings on disappearance. …


Investigating Grassland And Cropland Conversion Decisions In The Dakotas, 2015 Producers Survey And Analysis, Md Niaz Murshed Chowdhury Jan 2016

Investigating Grassland And Cropland Conversion Decisions In The Dakotas, 2015 Producers Survey And Analysis, Md Niaz Murshed Chowdhury

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates grassland and cropland conversion decisions in the Dakotas. Data from a 2015 survey completed by 1,026 producers located in 57 counties of the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) were used to evaluate land conversions. This thesis attempts to identify the land use conversion incidence and rate (grass to crop and crop to grass); the link between past and projected land use conversion decisions in the Dakotas, and determinants of land use conversion using different statistical tools, including logistic regression methods. A regional analysis of converted acres reveals that the grass to crop conversion rates (as percent of 2014 …