Relax! It\u27s Just a Dandelion: Perceived Benefits and Barriers to Urban Integrated Pest Management

Pesticide misuse in urban gardens contributes to pollution of lakes and rivers, ill health of humans and other organisms, and disruptions of ecological balances. Integrated Pest Management (IPM) has been successfully used in agriculture for over 20 years, but its adoption by landscaping professionals has been slow. The 2-year project described here undertook baseline research into attitudes about IPM in the Lake Monona watershed, Wisconsin. Resulting data led to a social marketing strategy including prototype materials to assist professional landscapers in discussing IPM with clients. Materials were piloted on a Web site and with watershed groups

Building cover crop expertise with citizen science in the upper Midwest: supporting farmer innovation in a time of change

The use of cover cropping, as one element in a continuous living cover approach, has the potential to protect water quality and promote soil health, but overall U.S. acreage in cover crops as well as adoption rates remain low. Research on behavioral barriers to cover crop use indicates a lack of information about locally suitable practices and cover crop varieties, as well as the additional management complexity of cover cropping and a high degree of uncertainty in outcomes, especially in areas with shorter growing seasons. This paper describes the development of a citizen science project on cover cropping in Wisconsin designed to (i) generate more geographically distributed data on cover crop performance in the state; and (ii) build understanding of farmer decision-making around growing practices, barriers, and motivations for cover cropping. Citizen science, as it relies on physically distributed members of the public in data generation, is well established as an avenue for generating environmental data. We engage the approach as a tool for also researching influences on individual behavior and identifying potential leverage points for change, especially on-farm innovation and experimentation. I share project findings regarding cover cropping practices and biomass production, results on motivations and influences for cover cropping, as well as participatory approaches to share those results with farmers. This project also offers more general insights into how the citizen science model can be used to expand understanding of decision-making contexts, and to develop responsive outreach efforts that support participants in taking action

Fertile ground: Geographies of knowledge about soil fertility in the United States alternative agriculture movement

I argue in this dissertation, that alternative agriculture offers an epistemological challenge to the conventional approach to food production. To put it succinctly: alternative agriculture is not just about another way to grow; it's about another way to know. I test this hypothesis through an examination of the discourses of three of the more organized networks in U.S. alternative agriculture: biodynamics, organics and ecoagriculture. These networks have supported research, education and outreach activities around alternative agriculture for decades. I focus on people and institutions of the U.S. Midwest. Bruno Latour's actor-networks and his "circulatory" model of the process of "science-making" provide me with a method for analyzing the creation of alternative knowledge by these groups, from their founders to the present. This research relies on writing by Foucault and Latour as well as by agricultural geographers to inform an investigation into the alternative knowledge networks, with a focus on the discourse of soil fertility. The definition and use of science in core texts provides a central thread for the analysis, which sheds light on how different groups claim and defend territories of agricultural knowledge, and construct their arguments about soil in alternative production. I analyze the identification and labeling of material nature, as well as specific technologies developed to do this work. I also examine criteria for, and evaluation of, experts as well as how people build alliances with other scientists and with a larger public, and how they argue for the importance of their scientific contributions. Although these networks all produce arguments for "following nature," they offer radically different perspectives on what nature consists of, and different frameworks and technologies for working with it. I also juxtapose this discourse analysis with an analysis of the public discourse and regulatory language of the federal standard regulating organic production---the Organic Farm Production Act of 1990, controversy around which prevented it from being implemented until 2002. This comparison sheds light on some of the specific challenges presented to mainstream production and conventional agricultural science by alternative agriculture, and on the process by which some alternative ideas become mainstream

Disciplining microbes in the implementation of US Federal Organic Standards

The National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), a citizen panel charged with the job of recommending to the US Secretary of Agriculture guidelines for certified organic agriculture, can be analyzed as a ‘boundary organization’. By linking organic farmers’ knowledge with peer-reviewed science, the board builds the base of organic agriculture for legitimacy and also develops a new product: federally certified organic agriculture. Examination of organic standards on composting, with a focus on characterizations of composting microbes, reveals the very compromised ability of the NOSB to effect change, however, despite its efforts to build common ground between institutions with very different cultures and historical interests. A focus on discourses of microbes provides insights into the accomplishments of and limits to the influence of the NOSB as well as the larger organic movement. Organizational tactics of the NOSB are best understood within the larger context of institutional commitments to specific forms of agriculture.