What can resaerch deliver for organic farming? Key note presentation

It’s a great pleasure to have been asked to speak today, and on a subject that – while I can claim no expertise – has occupied my thoughts intermittently over the last 25 years. I did at one stage seriously consider whether your profession was the one I wished to follow. I attended agricultural college in the late 1970s, and while my family had a farm, it seemed unlikely I would be the one asked to manage it. So I thought if I were to pursue a career in agriculture, either writing about it or researching how to improve it seemed very real career opportunities. I took a different route, for a variety of reasons – most of them not germane to our subject today. But it is true to say that much of what I saw then had the effect of turning me away from agricultural research. I first went to college shortly after the 1979 change of government, and some here will recall the incoming minister – Peter Walker – exalting the UK’s farmers to ever greater levels of production. I had looked for a college at which I could study organic agriculture – unsuccessfully, as the only place I could find as a small place in Sussex, which I didn’t think would fulfil the other needs typical of a male teenager. At Harper Adams, which I therefore chose, there was with one honourable exception no interest whatever among the 80-odd staff in organic production. The college bursar, a well-respected figure, openly derided it as “muck and magic”. That was typical of the time and of the place. The quality of much that was taught was highly dubious. During my sandwich year, I looked after a herd of freerange pigs on fertile but heavy land in the English county of Buckinghamshire. I could not fail to note that the sows derived a significant proportion of their nutritional needs from grazing the rye grass on which they were folded. From memory, I think we concluded that a breeding sow could obtain about a third of her nutritional needs from grazing over the course of the production cycle. So I was surprised to be told by our lecturer in pig husbandry that this was physiologically impossible. Monogastric animals are incapable of digesting cellulose, we were informed, so all the nutritional needs of the domestic pig – whether kept indoors or out – had to be met by supplementary feed. To have written anything else in an examination would have been to court failure. We learned agronomy and modern techniques in pest and parasite control that relied very heavily on poisons. One such chemical – I recall its name as Temik – was so toxic, we were told by our lecturer with a quiver of excitement, that a single speck would be a fatal to a human being. It was incorporated in soil, to control nematodes in potatoes. At the time the college was involved in a range of agricultural research, including a project investigating the effects of feeding various unusual substances to cattle. I don’t think they included ruminant derived protein – an experiment conducted elsewhere with an ultimate price tag of over £4 billion. But I do remember considerable interest in the effects on growth rates of feeding beef cattle the dust scraped from the inside of power station chimneys. These are random recollections from a typical agricultural education a quarter of a century ago. To me they represent the perversion – almost the corruption, although I don’t think that is quite an accurate term – of what should be one of the noblest professions. And I find it very heartening that the priorities have changed so much in the intervening years as to fill a hall such as this to debate what is, I believe, genuinely the public interest in agricultural research. I have been asked to think about what would be my priorities for that research community. I’d like to outline four areas that I think each deserves far greater attention than they have received so far

Jenna\u27s Story, Part I

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay\u27s first paragraph. Jenna slid the needle into her pulsing brachial vein; she always used medical terms she had learned before she dropped out of school, at least the ones that she remembered from that long ago. The prick of the needle and the rush of meth that flooded into her veins when she pushed the plunger down didn\u27t bother her anymore. They were just minor inconveniences. She could feel it melt into her blood and run along the pathways of her body to her brain. Jenna fell back into the green beanbag chair on the floor in front of her mirror. It was taking longer than normal for the life to come back to her when she shot up, but it would come eventually; the waiting is what bothered her

Muslim Head Coverings

I researched female head coverings in the Muslim culture, to see how the veils affected society and society\u27s response to the covering

CLIP/CETL Professional Report 2006/7 : Thinking Tools for Creative Learning; Connecting the Units

The aim is to enable students to investigate and acquire transferable thinking and reasoning tools to facilitate independent learning, reflective practice and to improve articulation and synchronisation across all course units

The significance of gender and sexuality : a study of discrimination and equal employment opportunities policy in the state sector : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Social Work at Massey University

The purposes of this study are twofold. The first is to look at the experiences of lesbian social workers in order to describe the themes and patterns characteristic of discrimination within the context of their professional and employment status in the state sector. The second is to examine whether the policy of Equal Employment Opportunities for women in the Department Of Social Welfare adequately addresses discrimination against lesbians, and the extent to which the needs of lesbians can be met within the existing framework of the policy. It has been proposed in this study that discrimination against lesbians in the workplace is a real and tangible source of oppression termed 'heterosexism'. Lesbian social workers' employment experiences indicate that these are qualitatively different from those of heterosexual women. Analysis of these experiences relies upon an understanding of the historical social, sexual and economic dynamic of male power over women. Heterosexuality has been emphasised as the only acceptable sexuality and therefore, an institutionalised form of control over all women's lives. One of the consequences of this control is the denial of the existence of lesbianism. This is because lesbianism represents an independent and alternative lifestyle and family structure. While this threatens the traditional male defined nuclear family relations it also challenges the view that women should be treated as economically dependent upon a man. There is strong evidence to suggest that gender is a significant determinant of employment opportunities. Thus, there is a clear basis for recognising women as a target group for special attention under an Equal Employment Opportunities policy. However, this study challenges the assumption that the needs of all women can be adequately addressed within the context of a hetero-relational model. For example, it is argued here that the underlying criteria for access to employment opportunities is based on conformity to traditional gender roles and stereotypes. This reinforces women's economic dependency on a man and a male controlled labour market. The view that women's equality should depend on their social, sexual and economic relations with men is therefore questioned. In contrast it is argued that lesbians should be able to benefit from their social, sexual and economic independence from a man and that any measure of their employment position in relation to men is a measure for all women. The radical potential for Equal Employment Opportunities policy for all women may well depend upon the inclusion of lesbians and their legal protection from discrimination

A periodic microfluidic bubbling oscillator: insight into the stability of two-phase microflows

This letter describes a periodically oscillating microfoam flow. For constant input parameters, both the produced bubble volume and the flow rate vary over a factor two. We explicit the link between foam topology alternance and flow rate changes, and construct a retroaction model where bubbles still present downstream determine the volume of new bubbles, in agreement with experiment. This gives insight into the various parameters important to maintain monodispersity and at the same time shows a method to achieve controlled polydispersity.Comment: 4 page