Book Review of \u3ci\u3eCultivating a Movement: Excerpts from an Oral History of Organic Farming and Sustainable Agriculture on California’s Central Coast.\u3c/i\u3e

Edited by I. Reti and S. Rabkin 2011. UC Santa Cruz Library, Santa Cruz, California. 299 p., US $19.95, ISBN 9-780972-33431, paper. Often the most compelling evidence for success of organic farming comes from the personal stories of farmers. Coupled with reports on the application of science in organics, the practical knowledge of people in the field provides a rich foundation for the ongoing growth of this intriguing sector of the food system. This collection of interviews by the staff of the Regional History Project is one unique activity of the UC Santa Cruz library, and a valuable contribution to the literature on organic systems. In stark contrast to the industrial, large-scale monocultures that dominate the agricultural scene in California, ‘tucked away along rivers, bluffs and canyons, and even within city limits, another, alternative agricultural landscape is emerging. The land tells this story through the voices of those who farm the soil and devote their lives to the sustainable agriculture and organic farming movement’ (from the introduction by Congressman Sam Farr, D-CA). An unlikely complement to the high-tech production and global marketing systems, the organic food business continues to be the fastestgrowing component of the food industry. With focus on local production and direct sales to consumers, organic farmers often put high value in ‘relationship marketing’. As the stories from these interviews reveal, the crops, systems and sales strategies are as varied and creative as the farmers who designed them. This diversity is reflected in the crops grown, the crop/ animal systems and interactions, and the long-term plans of owners

\u3ci\u3eWorld Agriculture and Environment\u3c/i\u3e: \u3ci\u3eA Commodity-by-Commodity Guide to Impacts and Practices\u3c/i\u3e [Book Review]

This comprehensive reference book provides a good overview of global agriculture at the end of the millennium. In the introduction, author Jason Clay brings his long experience—in farming, teaching, and government service—into the presentation of a balanced perspective on how production must be balanced with concern for the environment. Now with World Wildlife Fund, he couples a background in economics, anthropology and geography with considerable professional experience in aquaculture and cooperation in the private sector to explore multiple aspects of agriculture and food production. He is particularly effective in discussing the economic and environmental sustainability of the food system, although he also brings in social dimensions such as over-consumption, human obesity, and waste in the system in the North as contributing factors to our global dilemma over food

The Department of Defense Acquisition Workforce: Background, Analysis, and Questions for Congress

[Excerpt] This report provides background on the Department of Defense (DOD) acquisition workforce. Specifically, the report addresses the following questions: What is the acquisition workforce? What is the current size of the acquisition workforce? How has Congress sought to improve the acquisition workforce in the past? What are some potential questions for Congress to explore in the area of acquisition workforce management to improve acquisitions

Impact of Poverty on Access to Healthcare Facilities and Services in Nigeria: A Study of Nasarawa State

Poverty, hunger, disease and unemployment have become a scourge and are widespread and their occurrence have increasing devastation on the economy and the quality of life of the people. The scourge of poverty is not restricted to only accessibility to the minimum income earned by an individual, but it includes poor per calorie intake, nutritional diet, food, the level of accessibility to clean water. The broad objective of this study was to empirically investigate the relationship between poverty and healthcare in Nasarawa State using Instrumental Variable approach and the study adopted the Grossman Model. The area covered are three senatorial zones namely: Nasarawa North, Nasarawa South, Nasarawa West. In Nasarawa North, General Hospital Akwanga. In Nasarawa South, Dalhatu Araft Specialist Hospital Lafia. In Nasarawa West, Federal Medical Centre Keffi. Questionnaire was the instrument used in data collection. Using a Smith (1984) sample formular, a sample size of 298 was arrived at from a population of 3508; and these sample made up the number of questionnaires that were distributed. The study developed an instrumental model, and the estimation techniques used was the STATA statistical software. The results revealed that, the per capita income has a negative and insignificant impact on peoples’ access to health care facilities in Nasarawa state. In addition, it was discovered from the results that, the per calorie intake (such as protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, etc) had a poor impact on under 5 mortality rates in Nasarawa State; and these were due to lack of awareness and ignorance, food insecurity, poor intra family food distribution, poor access to good quality health and sanitation services. Finally, the result showed that, the literacy level was discovered to have an insignificant effect on maternal mortality rate in Nasarawa state. The study therefore recommends that amount charged on health services provided to rural communities, especially in Nasarawa state should be provided in a subsidized form to enable those with low income to have access to available health care services. Keywords: Poverty, healthcare, Per capita Income, Maternal mortality JEL Classification: P36, 111,11

Future Horizons: Recent Literature in Sustainable Agriculture

Here is one building block in the foundation for a future agriculture. Increasing trainer literacy in sustainable agriculture can be defined on several levels. At its most literal, it is an anthology of reviews familiarizing the reader with some of the authors, topics, and titles that have composed the sustainable agriculture literature over the last decade or more. It also serves as an annotated bibliography where the dry abstracts of many such works are replaced with insightful essays. Most importantly, this primer is a language text, exposing the user to the semantics, symbols, and syntax of sustainable agriculture. This collection of titles is not meant to be exhaustive, but rather to be representative. Our primary audience was identified in the legislative language that established a Professional Development Program in the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program: Extension staff and other Federal personnel who deal directly with farmers. This collection also can be useful to others interested in food and natural resource systems: teachers, resource specialists, farmers and ranchers, activists, or others who want to brush up on current thinking

A Dark Census: Statistically Detecting the Satellite Populations of Distant Galaxies

In the standard structure formation scenario based on the cold dark matter paradigm, galactic halos are predicted to contain a large population of dark matter subhalos. While the most massive members of the subhalo population can appear as luminous satellites and be detected in optical surveys, establishing the existence of the low mass and mostly dark subhalos has proven to be a daunting task. Galaxy-scale strong gravitational lenses have been successfully used to study mass substructures lying close to lensed images of bright background sources. However, in typical galaxy-scale lenses, the strong lensing region only covers a small projected area of the lens's dark matter halo, implying that the vast majority of subhalos cannot be directly detected in lensing observations. In this paper, we point out that this large population of dark satellites can collectively affect gravitational lensing observables, hence possibly allowing their statistical detection. Focusing on the region of the galactic halo outside the strong lensing area, we compute from first principles the statistical properties of perturbations to the gravitational time delay and position of lensed images in the presence of a mass substructure population. We find that in the standard cosmological scenario, the statistics of these lensing observables are well approximated by Gaussian distributions. The formalism developed as part of this calculation is very general and can be applied to any halo geometry and choice of subhalo mass function. Our results significantly reduce the computational cost of including a large substructure population in lens models and enable the use of Bayesian inference techniques to detect and characterize the distributed satellite population of distant lens galaxies.Comment: 21 pages + appendices, 7 figures. v2: Some derivations streamlined, extended appendices. Matches version published in PR

Paper Session I-C - Low Gravity Investigations on Suborbital Rockets

The Consortium for Materials Development in Space has initiated two series of suborbital rocket missions to promote goals of the NASA Office of Commercial Programs, The broad objectives of the new missions are twofold: 1) to accomplish materials and biotechnology investigations in microgravity and 2) to stimulate the commercial rocket industry in the United States. The first series, designated the Consort missions, provide six to eight minutes of microgravity. Their launch and recovery operations are performed at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. A Consort 1 flight occurred on March 29,1989. All rocket and payload systems operated successfully. A Consort 2 mission occurred November 15,1989, Consort 3 is scheduled for May 1990. The second series is designated Joust. It will provide 13-15 minutes of microgravity. Joust 1 is schedule for launch in November 1990 from the Eastern Test Range in Florida. The Starfire rocket that launches Consort missions is a two stage vehicle. The Prospector rocket for Joust is a single stage vehicle

Impacts des barrages sur les caractéristiques des débits moyens annuels en fonction du mode de gestion et de la taille des bassins versants au Québec

Nous avons comparé les impacts des barrages sur les caractéristiques (volume d’écoulement-fréquence, variabilité interannuelle et forme de courbe de distribution) des débits moyens annuels dans les trois régimes régularisés observés (inversion, homogénéisation et type naturel) au Québec. Nous avons appliqué la méthode de proportionnalité qui consiste à comparer les caractéristiques des débits des rivières naturelles et celles des rivières régularisées en fonction de la taille des bassins versants. En ce qui concerne le volume d’écoulement-fréquence et sa variabilité interannuelle, le changement a été observé seulement en régime d’inversion. Il se traduit par une baisse des débits moyens annuels durant les années hydrologiques sèches et une variabilité interannuelle relativement forte par rapport aux rivières naturelles. Ces changements sont attribués principalement au mode de gestion des réservoirs car on lâche moins d’eau durant ces années hydrologiques sèches. Enfin, les changements des coefficients d’asymétrie et d’aplatissement ont été observés surtout en régime d’homogénéisation. Cette étude démontre que les barrages peuvent modifier toutes les caractéristiques des débits moyens annuels contrairement à l’opinion couramment admise.We compared the impacts of dams on the characteristics (magnitude-frequency, inter-annual variability and distribution curve shape) of the mean annual flows in three regulated flow regimes (inversion, homogenization and natural type) in Québec. We applied the “proportionality method”, which consists of comparing the flow characteristics of natural rivers to regulated rivers according to watershed size. A change in the flow-frequency volume and its inter-annual variability was observed only in the inversion flow regime. This result translates into a decrease in average annual flows during dry hydrological years and a relatively high inter-annual variability relative to natural rivers. These changes are mainly ascribed to the reservoir management mode because less water is released during dry hydrological years. Finally, the changes of the coefficients of asymmetry and skewness are particularly observed in homogenization flow regime. This study shows that, contrary to the commonly accepted opinion, dams can alter all the characteristics of annual average flows

Linking People, Purpose, and Place: An Ecological Approach to Agriculture

Linking Ecology and Agriculture I Whole Farm Planning 27 Soil Quality 49 Agroforestry 81 Grazing Systems 107 Weed and Insect Management 149 Farmer Groups 179 Farmland Conversion 203 Resources and Information Sources 23

Hydrogen arcjet technology

During the 1960's, a substantial research effort was centered on the development of arcjets for space propulsion applications. The majority of the work was at the 30 kW power level with some work at 1-2 kW. At the end of the research effort, the hydrogen arcjet had demonstrated over 700 hours of life in a continuous endurance test at 30 kW, at a specific impulse over 1000 s, and at an efficiency of 0.41. Another high power design demonstrated 500 h life with an efficiency of over 0.50 at the same specific impulse and power levels. At lower power levels, a life of 150 hours was demonstrated at 2 kW with an efficiency of 0.31 and a specific impulse of 935 s. Lack of a space power source hindered arcjet acceptance and research ceased. Over three decades after the first research began, renewed interest exists for hydrogen arcjets. The new approach includes concurrent development of the power processing technology with the arcjet thruster. Performance data were recently obtained over a power range of 0.3-30 kW. The 2 kW performance has been repeated; however, the present high power performance is lower than that obtained in the 1960's at 30 kW, and lifetimes of present thrusters have not yet been demonstrated. Laboratory power processing units have been developed and operated with hydrogen arcjets for the 0.1 kW to 5 kW power range. A 10 kW power processing unit is under development and has been operated at design power into a resistive load