Cultivating Agricultural Literacy: Challenge for the Liberal Arts

A review and analysis of 11 pacesetting experiments funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation to generate greater awareness among liberal arts students and faculty about the role and importance ofthe agriculture enterprise to the nation

Seed Mucilage Improves Seedling Emergence of a Sand Desert Shrub

The success of seedling establishment of desert plants is determined by seedling emergence response to an unpredictable precipitation regime. Sand burial is a crucial and frequent environmental stress that impacts seedling establishment on sand dunes. However, little is known about the ecological role of seed mucilage in seedling emergence in arid sandy environments. We hypothesized that seed mucilage enhances seedling emergence in a low precipitation regime and under conditions of sand burial. In a greenhouse experiment, two types of Artemisia sphaerocephala achenes (intact and demucilaged) were exposed to different combinations of burial depth (0, 5, 10, 20, 40 and 60 mm) and irrigation regimes (low, medium and high, which simulated the precipitation amount and frequency in May, June and July in the natural habitat, respectively). Seedling emergence increased with increasing irrigation. It was highest at 5 mm sand burial depth and ceased at burial depths greater than 20 mm in all irrigation regimes. Mucilage significantly enhanced seedling emergence at 0, 5 and 10 mm burial depths in low irrigation, at 0 and 5 mm burial depths in medium irrigation and at 0 and 10 mm burial depths in high irrigation. Seed mucilage also reduced seedling mortality at the shallow sand burial depths. Moreover, mucilage significantly affected seedling emergence time and quiescence and dormancy percentages. Our findings suggest that seed mucilage plays an ecologically important role in successful seedling establishment of A. sphaerocephala by improving seedling emergence and reducing seedling mortality in stressful habitats of the sandy desert environment

Reinventing Appalachia: Five Community and Social Entrepreneurship Models

Reinventing Appalachia: Five Community and Social Entrepreneurship Models Rather than looking back to a gilded age and rather than devoting energy to what should have been, five social entrepreneurship and community groups in the West Virginia coalfields and coal adjacent SWVA/SWV counties reinvent what is possible for this increasingly rural swath of Appalachia. Princeton, WV\u27s RiffRaff Arts Collective creates, connects, and collaborates. The coalfield-located farmer cooperative McDowell County Farms (Kimball, WV) farms, gathers, and teaches. Sustainable Williamson (Williamson, WV) mentors, models, and mobilizes. Grayson LandCare/Blue Ridge Plateau (Grayson/Carroll/Floyd Counties, VA) sows, manages, and builds. Treetop Creative Co-op (Hinton, WV) imagines, relates, and repurposes. These groups provide five different models for reinvigoration of Appalachia. In conversation with rural and Science and Technology Studies researcher Crystal Cook Marshall, they discuss their beginnings, their trials and tribulations, their processes, and their successes. As convener, Cook Marshall situates their context in the emerging Central Appalachian economic sectors of sustainable agriculture, creative communities, and health/recreation, and connects their potential for creating work that can\u27t be displaced by technology and identity that is not energy sector bound