AGRICULTURAL AND FOOD POLICY ISSUES AND THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS

Agricultural and Food Policy,

Media Literacy and Its Use as a Method to Encourage Civic Engagement

Changes in technology have opened up a new kind of participatory citizenry; one in which engaged citizens’ blog, post, tweet, upload, create, and otherwise interact with others online. This paper explores the intersection of media and information literacy with civic participation by examining three specific programs operating in the United States. These projects include «Powerful Voices for Kids», «The Salzburg Academy on Media and Social Change»; and «Cultivating the NetGeneration of Youth as Global Citizens and Media Literate Leaders in a Digital Age», in which educators and students at schools in the USA and Africa meet virtually and physically to explore collaborative methods that use media to build bridges of understanding. Through analysis of each program’s practices and personal interviews with the program director, consistent methods for developing a strong media and information literacy program with a focus on democratic participation are revealed. These include a need for programs to reflect a respect for student interest in popular culture, willingness for program educators to put aside assumptions that students lack an interest in current events, recognition that technology use is a means to an end, not the ultimate goal, and the utilization of a support team for the instructors or educator

The interplay of classes of algorithmically random objects

We study algorithmically random closed subsets of $2^\omega$, algorithmically random continuous functions from $2^\omega$ to $2^\omega$, and algorithmically random Borel probability measures on $2^\omega$, especially the interplay between these three classes of objects. Our main tools are preservation of randomness and its converse, the no randomness ex nihilo principle, which say together that given an almost-everywhere defined computable map between an effectively compact probability space and an effective Polish space, a real is Martin-L\"of random for the pushforward measure if and only if its preimage is random with respect to the measure on the domain. These tools allow us to prove new facts, some of which answer previously open questions, and reprove some known results more simply. Our main results are the following. First we answer an open question of Barmapalias, Brodhead, Cenzer, Remmel, and Weber by showing that $\mathcal{X}\subseteq2^\omega$ is a random closed set if and only if it is the set of zeros of a random continuous function on $2^\omega$. As a corollary we obtain the result that the collection of random continuous functions on $2^\omega$ is not closed under composition. Next, we construct a computable measure $Q$ on the space of measures on $2^\omega$ such that $\mathcal{X}\subseteq2^\omega$ is a random closed set if and only if $\mathcal{X}$ is the support of a $Q$-random measure. We also establish a correspondence between random closed sets and the random measures studied by Culver in previous work. Lastly, we study the ranges of random continuous functions, showing that the Lebesgue measure of the range of a random continuous function is always contained in $(0,1)$

Structural Change in Canadian Agriculture and the Impacts on Canadian Farm Income and Farm Households

Agricultural and Food Policy,

The Use of Multi-beam Sonars to Image Bubbly Ship Wakes

During the past five years, researchers at Penn State University (PSU) have used upward-looking multi-beam (MB) sonar to image the bubbly wakes of surface ships. In 2000, a 19-beam, 5° beam width, 120° sector, 250 kHz MB sonar integrated into an autonomous vehicle was used to obtain a first-of-a-kind look at the three-dimensional variability of bubbles in a large ship wake. In 2001 we acquired a Reson 8101 MB sonar, which operates at 240 kHz and features 101-1.5º beams spanning a 150º sector. In July 2002, the Reson sonar was deployed looking upward from a 1.4 m diameter buoy moored at 29.5 m depth in 550 m of water using three anchor lines. A fiber optic cable connected the sonar to a support ship 500 m away. Images of the wake of a small research vessel provided new information about the persistence of bubble clouds in the ocean. An important goal is to use the MB sonar to estimate wake bubble distributions, as has been done with single beam sonar. Here we show that multipath interference and strong, specular reflections from the sea surface adversely affect the use of MB sonars to unambiguously estimate wake bubble distributio

Intergeneration Transfers and Retiring Farmers

The percentage of farmers who are approaching retirement age is increasing. The census of agriculture shows that in 2001 there were a larger percentage of farmers over 55 years of age than was the case in the previous censuses. The transferring of the assets held by these farmers to the next generation has important policy implications for the structure of Canadian agriculture. It also raises several policy questions for future research. Using data from 2005 Farm Financial Survey this paper examines the transfer of assets for both one and multi-generation farms. We have identified 73,900 farms where the oldest operator is 55 or older. Of these farmers 18,800 are operated by more than one generation of farmers. In the case of these farms the next generation is already involved in the farm business. The remaining 55,100 farms are operated by only one generation of farmers. The total assets based on market value for the one generation farms are estimated to be $47 Billion. The assets which are expected to be transferred to the next generation total$33.4 Billion. The majority of these farms are expected to be bought up by the multi-generation farms to achieve economies of scale or to be purchased by new entrants as lifestyle farms. In the case of multi-generation farms the total assets owned are estimated to be $40 Billion. The assets which are expected to be transferred to the next generation total$34.1 Billion. These farms are expected to stay within the family and be purchased by the next generation. They will continue to be operated by the next generation and in some instances on a larger scale.Farm Management,