Farming smarter, not harder: securing our agricultural economy

In the context of rising global demand, resource scarcity, and environmental pressures, this report considers the future of Australian agriculture. Global populations are growing and food prices are skyrocketing. This creates new market opportunities for Australian agriculture. But Australia has fragile and vulnerable soils, which are being degraded at an unsustainable rate. If we continue with ‘business as usual’, we will keep losing soils faster than they can be replaced. Acting now to improve soil condition could increase agricultural production by up to 2.1 billion per year. It could also help farmers cut costs on fertiliser and water use. “Winners of the food boom will be countries with less fossil fuel intensive agriculture, more reliable production, and access to healthy land and soils” said the report’s lead author Laura Eadie. “How we manage our land and soils will be key to whether Australia sees more of the upsides or downsides of rising global food demand.” Farming Smarter, Not Harder finds that Australian agriculture can build a lasting competitive advantage through innovation that raises agricultural productivity, reduces fuel and fertiliser dependence, and preserves the environment and resources it draws on. To achieve this, Australia needs to: Invest in knowledge: increase government investment in research and development by up to 7% a year; increase funding for extension programs; implement the Productivity Commission’s recommendation to set up Rural Research Australia; fund the national soil health strategy with an endowment sufficient to support ongoing research and monitoring for at least 20 years. Stop chopping and changing support for regional natural resource management: Federal and State governments should commit to a 10-year agreement to provide stable longterm funding for regional Natural Resource Management (NRM) bodies, including specific funding to monitor long-term trends in natural resource condition. Enable accountable community governance of land and soil management: To enable farming communities to protect themselves from free-riding, they should be supported to develop stewardship standards based on a shared understanding of what it takes to maintain productive agricultural landscapes over the long term. Align financial incentives with the long-term needs of sustainable farming communities: In addition to the drought policy reforms announced on October 26, drought assistance policies should support farming communities to take a lead in preparations for more frequent and severe droughts, and should be linked to community stewardship standards. “Recent projections indicate the potential doubling of exports by 2050, according to the National Food Plan and ANZ-commissioned Greener Pastures report. Our work looks at how to support farmers dealing with the practical challenges of seizing this opportunity, in the context of soil degradation and rising input costs”, said Laura Eadie. The case to increase research funding and foster innovative farming is made even stronger by the likely impacts of climate change. Without action to adapt to more variable and extreme weather, by 2050 Australia could lose 6.5 billion per year in wheat, beef, mutton, lamb and dairy production. The report profiles leading farmers who are already seeing the benefits of innovations in sustainable farming. It proposes simple measures to support them and the agricultural communities that depend on healthy farming landscapes. Download Farming Smarter, Not Harder report in full [Australia\u27s newly appointed Advocate for Soil Health, Michael Jeffery, also chairs the non-profit organisation Soils for Life which is already actively encouraging wider adoption of smarter farming. The Soils for Life report Innovations for Regenerative Landscape Management showcases a range of case studies of these farming innovations in practise, and the positive economic, environmental and social outcomes they are achieving. Read the case studies, learn more about the challenges landscape degradation will bring and what we can do about it at www.soilsforlife.org.au.

THE EFFECTS OF THREE SERVICE DELIVERY MODELS ON VOCABULARY LEARNING BY SECOND-GRADE CHILDREN

Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) provide services to children in schools across the United States primarily in a direct small group service delivery model outside of the regular education classroom. To date little research exists to indicate that direct pull-out service delivery is an effective model in elementary schools for students requiring speech and language therapy. One area that has been studied is the effectiveness of vocabulary intervention among service delivery models. Preliminary findings suggest that students with language and literacy deficits learn vocabulary well within a regular education environment with SLP support. However, there is little consensus on how service delivery models are defined in the literature and what constitutes effective vocabulary instruction in different models. Previous studies comparing service delivery models that target vocabulary were aimed at curricular vocabulary. There are no studies addressing service delivery models targeting instructional verbs and intensity of instruction. The present study aimed to determine if co-teaching, the process by which two professionals cooperatively plan and teach a lesson, produced differential effects on children’s vocabulary learning as compared to more traditional service delivery practices. To achieve this, a 3 x 3 x 2 randomized experimental design was used to answer the study questions. The independent between group variables were three different service delivery conditions by three student groups. The three service delivery conditions included 1) coteaching between an SLP and a classroom teacher, 2) traditional SLP pullout, and 3) traditional second grade teacher. The three student groups included typical students and two groups of students at risk for literacy deficits, students identified as low socioeconomic status and students with disabilities. The within group dependent variables were the group aggregate scores at pre-test and post-test on two different vocabulary measures used to assess the effects of the three service delivery conditions. Finally, we examined differences in vocabulary instruction among the three service delivery conditions with a focus on dosage, frequency, and intensity of the instruction. Participants included six classroom teachers within three schools in a moderately sized school district in a suburban Kentucky county, three SLPs and 112 second grade student participants. Nine instructional verbs were taught over the course of six weeks with two 20-minute sessions per week in all service delivery conditions. Results indicated that all students’ vocabulary knowledge increased significantly regardless of service delivery model. Instruction had significantly greater effects on all students’ expressive word knowledge than receptive word knowledge. However, group differences did emerge. Students identified as typical and low SES groups scored significantly better on the expressive measure than students in the disability group. Students identified in the typical group scored significantly better on the receptive measure than the students in the low SES and disability groups. While no meaningful differences in student learning emerged across delivery models, the teaching episode intensity was higher in conditions involving an SLP as compared to the teacher only condition. Implications for provision of vocabulary instruction using instructional verbs are discussed

History at Hand: An Analysis of Self-Guided Historic Walking Tours in Whatcom County, Washington

This study explores and analyzes self-guided historic walking tours in Whatcom County, Washington, as part of Whatcom County’s heritage tourism offerings. Heritage Tourism a specialized field of tourism that has seen growth over the last several decades and has become the most successful specialized tourism market. Twelve self-guided historic walking tours were analyzed from an anthropological framework, exploring themes in multi-vocality, authenticity, sense of place, and audience engagement in interpretation. The narrative text from each tour booklet or pamphlet was analyzed using criteria developed by the author to examine the presence or absence of diversity, authenticity, audience engagement in the interpretation, and how the piece contributed to developing a sense of place for the location selected. Suggestions were made for the self-guided historic walking tours that did not meet the criteria for multi-vocality, authenticity, sense of place and audience engagement to improve the tours to include these themes in future presentations. Improvement to the presentations were informed using historic background information researched for this study using public history and ethnohistory approaches. The criteria developed by this study can be used by future historians to develop more inclusive and engaging presentations to attract a larger audience to popular tourist districts, helping to increase revenue and support local businesses

Hegel and Colonialism

This article explores the implications of Hegel’s Philosophy of World History with respect to colonialism. For Hegel, freedom can be recognized and practised only in classical, Christian and modern Europe; therefore, the world’s other peoples can acquire freedom only if Europeans impose their civilization upon them. Although this imposition denies freedom to colonized peoples, this denial is legitimate for Hegel because it is the sole condition on which these peoples can gain freedom in the longer term. The article then considers whether Hegel’s basic account of freedom can be extricated from his Eurocentric and pro-colonialist interpretation of the course of history. The article argues that matters are more complicated because that interpretation has significant connections with Hegel’s conception of freedom as self-determination

The Way We Live Now : How Architectural Education can support the Urban Development of Small Settlements

One of the most significant aspects of twenty-first century society is the need for the individual to lay claim to the control of many aspects of the circumstances of life. Traditional government, in which policy is formed by experts and administered by state officials, is increasingly being challenged. Top-down enforcement of regulations, rules or directives is no longer acceptable to many people who feel that the individual or small collective is much better placed to make important decisions about things that happen within their own neighbourhood. It is well documented that the UK has a shortage of well-constructed and affordable housing. Neighbourhood Planning was part of the Localism Bill introduced in 2011 by the British Government. It passes responsibility for important decisions about the development of the built environment from the centralised government to the local community. This should, in theory be a very good thing. The community is much better positioned to understand the needs and capability of their environment. Neighbourhood Planning certainly enables communities to play a much stronger role in shaping the areas in which they live and work. It provides an opportunity for communities to set out a vision for how they want their community to develop in ways that meet identified local need and make sense for local people. However, there is the danger of well-meaning, but ill-informed individuals making decisions that have massive implications for the community. Continuity in Architecture, a studio for research, practice and teaching at the Manchester School of Architecture have been working directly with the local communities to develop meaningful and productive proposals for the development of the built environment. This chapter examines the evolution of Neighbourhood Planning, then discuss the projects that the studio have been involved with before offering some thoughts for the development of future initiatives

UnDoing Buildings Tour

Sally Stone, and Laura Sanderson from the Manchester School of Architecture, along with architect and conservationist Johnathan Djabarouti will lead a tour of some of the most interesting and compelling examples of adaptation and re-use in the city. These will range from prominent and well known buildings to secret places that have delicate relationships with their surroundings. Sally, Laura and Jonathan will encourage discussion and debate during the walk

The Wicked and the Logical: Facilitating Integrative Learning Among Introductory Computing Students

Higher education has embraced integrative learning as a means of enabling students to tackle so-called “wicked” problems, i.e. problems that are sufficiently complex, contested, and ambiguous that conventional, disciplinary specific approaches are inadequate to address. However, challenges remain in defining integrative learning consistently and effectively, especially because the cognitive processes that make up an integrative learning experience are not understood fully. This mixed-methods study was designed to help understand how students perceive, navigate, and resolve challenges that require them to integrate knowledge of one “wicked” subject (sustainability) with the skills of a practice rooted in mathematical logic (computer programming); how they express their integrative learning through reflective writing; and how we gain a stronger understanding of this process through linguistic analysis. The findings suggest that some students demonstrated the ability to integrate computational reasoning skills into socially relevant contexts more successfully, confidently, and in more well-rounded ways than others, though success required ways of thinking that extended beyond programming. The findings also underscore the potential need for reconceptualizing integrative teaching and learning in fields that have problem-solving traditions rooted in less “wicked” solutions

Cultivating Sustainability Through Participatory Action Research: Place -Based Education And Community Food Systems In Interior Alaska

Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2008As the environmental movement grows into a broader sustainability revolution, we must move beyond the traditional scope of environmental education to address social-ecological challenges through integrated education for sustainability. This research explores how place-based education can promote sustainability of a community food system in which feedbacks between production and consumption are integrated within a biocultural region. Through participatory action research, the project develops and demonstrates pedagogical components of sustainability that are applicable to formal and non-formal educational contexts. In this pedagogy, the purpose of sustainability education is to foster a community culture that will promote the emergence of sustainability in complex adaptive systems with social and ecological components. This work is based at the Effie Kokrine Charter School (EKCS), a junior-senior high school in Fairbanks, Alaska that teaches with an Alaska Native approach, emphasizing place-based, experiential, and holistic education by utilizing students' natural and human communities to facilitate learning. The collaborative design of an Interior Alaska gardening curriculum serves as both an organizing framework for the project's fieldwork as well as an outcome of the research. The resultant gardening curriculum and the rationale behind its design demonstrate components of pedagogy for sustainability, including systems thinking, place-based and problem-based learning, eco-cultural literacy, eco-justice values, and appropriate assessment. Sustainability pedagogy within settings of higher education should also include action research. The structure of this dissertation research reflects how action research incorporates components of sustainability pedagogy. This pedagogical framework has theoretical and practical implications in multiple educational settings and indicates ways for our educational institutions to participate in the global sustainability revolution

Replacing iron-folic acid with multiple micronutrient supplements among pregnant women in Bangladesh and Burkina Faso: costs, impacts, and cost-effectiveness.

Consumption of multiple micronutrient supplements (MMS) during pregnancy offers additional benefits compared with iron-folic acid (IFA) supplementation, but the tablets are more expensive. We estimated the effects, costs, and cost-effectiveness of hypothetically replacing IFA supplements with MMS for 1 year in Bangladesh and Burkina Faso. Using baseline demographic characteristics from LiST and effect sizes from a meta-analysis, we estimated the marginal effects of replacing IFA with MMS on mortality, adverse birth outcomes, and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) averted. We calculated the marginal tablet costs of completely replacing MMS with IFA (assuming 180 tablets per covered pregnancy). Replacing IFA with MMS could avert over 15,000 deaths and 30,000 cases of preterm birth annually in Bangladesh and over 5000 deaths and 5000 cases of preterm birth in Burkina Faso, assuming 100% coverage and adherence. We estimated the cost per death averted to be US$175-185 in Bangladesh and$112-125 in Burkina Faso. Cost per DALY averted ranged from $3 to$15, depending on the country and consideration of subgroup effects. Our estimates suggest that this policy change would cost-effectively save lives and reduce life-long disabilities. Improvements in program delivery and supplement adherence would be expected to improve the cost-effectiveness of replacing IFA with MMS