Integration of Crop-Livestock Systems: An Opportunity toProtect Grasslands from Conversion to Cropland in the US Great Plains

The Great Plains is a mixture of cropland and grassland mainly used for agricultural purposes, with grasslands under continual threat of conversion to cropland. Agriculturists are advocating for the integration of crop-livestock systems (ICLS) to recouple nutrient cycles, improve biodiversity, and increase resilience of agricultural operations. We address the benefits of ICLS in the Great Plains, contending that focus on improving soil health and financial stability of agricultural operations should reduce the conversion of grasslands to cropland. Using US Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Service Census of Agriculture survey data from the 1925 to 2017 category “cropland used only for pasture or grazing,” which represents land that had been cropped but converted to annual/perennial pasture and grazed, we showcase that the number of farms and the land area in this category is a reasonable proxy of ICLS. As expected, ICLS dramatically decreased in the entire United States from 1925 to 1945, but from 1945 to 2002 in the Great Plains ICLS remained relatively constant, providing evidence of sustained crop-livestock integration. Consistent high numbers of beef cows during this period and the wide availability of forages and crop residues for ruminants facilitated opportunities for producers to use ICLS on their individual operations (within farm) or among operations where row crop farmers and forage-based producers integrated beef cattle use across the landscape (among farms). This integration, however, was decoupled from 2006 to 2013, a period of high grain prices. As a result, economic value of grasslands was decreased and conversion to cropland was increased. Thus, conservation efforts in the Great Plains for grasslands should focus on keeping grasslands intact for provision of multiple ecosystem goods and services by emphasizing incorporation of ICLS within and among farms to reduce the risk of converting grassland to cropland

Wildfire: Preparing the ranch and farm

The Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service periodically issues revisions to its publications. The most current edition is made available. For access to an earlier edition, if available for this title, please contact the Oklahoma State University Library Archives by email at [email protected] or by phone at 405-744-6311

Prescribed fire: Understanding liability, laws and risk

The Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service periodically issues revisions to its publications. The most current edition is made available. For access to an earlier edition, if available for this title, please contact the Oklahoma State University Library Archives by email at [email protected] or by phone at 405-744-6311

The Effects of Patch-Burn Grazing on Vegetation Structural Heterogeneity in the Northern Tallgrass Prairie of South Dakota

Patch-burn grazing was developed as a grazing system to increase vegetation structural heterogeneity in managed grasslands of the central Great Plains. To evaluate this system in northern tallgrass prairie, we compared the structural response of vegetation following patch-burn grazing to that of continuous season-long grazing at two sites in eastern South Dakota. We established two pastures at each site and randomly assigned one pasture at each site to a patch-burn grazing treatment and the other to a continuous season-long grazing treatment. We allotted cow-calf pairs to each pasture during the summers of 2007 through 2009. We burned one patch of the patch-burn grazing pastures each spring for three years, leaving one patch not burned at the end of the study. We measured foliar cover of major plant functional groups, litter cover, and visual obstruction at the end of each grazing season and measured forage quality three times during the final summer. Ordination of principal component patch means showed greater vegetation structural heterogeneity for patch-burn grazing than season-long continuous grazing each year. Our results suggest that patch-burn grazing is a strategy that has potential to increase vegetation structural heterogeneity in northern tallgrass prairies and should be tested at other northern locations

The Positioning of the Parish in a Context of Individualization

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Balancing local and global security leitmotifs: Counter-terrorism and the spectacle of sporting mega-events

This article considers the transferability of sporting mega-event strategies across time and place. In doing so, it presents a number of arguments highlighting the progressive global standardization of sporting mega-event counter-terrorism strategies comprising continually reproduced security leitmotifs. Such orthodoxies are drawn from a range of experiences at both sporting and non-sporting mega-events. By contrast to these globalized models, the terrorist threats they seek to counter are almost always rooted in diverse local settings. This convergence of sporting mega-event counter-terrorism strategies does not simply represent an uncritical imposition of an external framework of security, however. Instead, this article identifies and interrogates how sporting mega-event security planning is also tempered by a range of localized processes, including vernacular cultures of security and the scale of extant security infrastructures. </jats:p

Contested topologies of UK counterterrorist surveillance: the rise and fall of Project Champion

This article empirically analyses the provenance, application and abandonment of Project Champion, a scheme designed to encircle two Birmingham neighbourhoods with surveillance cameras. Locating analysis within the anticipatory turn in social control practices, particular emphasis is placed on how collapsing distinctions between internal and external security draw multiple new actors and agencies into the despatch of counterterrorism. The article argues that topological approaches informed by Foucauldian notions of "security" allow for a better understanding of these heterogeneous techniques and configurations of security practice. Foucauldian notions of security represent a move beyond territorial control to the management of circulations, where subjects are left in situ, but their mobilities are monitored, delineated and assessed. © 2013 Taylor & Francis