Techniques of fertilizer introduction: a case study of inverted ratio fertilizers

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1968 T66Master of Scienc

Socializing One Health: an innovative strategy to investigate social and behavioral risks of emerging viral threats

In an effort to strengthen global capacity to prevent, detect, and control infectious diseases in animals and people, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) PREDICT project funded development of regional, national, and local One Health capacities for early disease detection, rapid response, disease control, and risk reduction. From the outset, the EPT approach was inclusive of social science research methods designed to understand the contexts and behaviors of communities living and working at human-animal-environment interfaces considered high-risk for virus emergence. Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, PREDICT behavioral research aimed to identify and assess a range of socio-cultural behaviors that could be influential in zoonotic disease emergence, amplification, and transmission. This broad approach to behavioral risk characterization enabled us to identify and characterize human activities that could be linked to the transmission dynamics of new and emerging viruses. This paper provides a discussion of implementation of a social science approach within a zoonotic surveillance framework. We conducted in-depth ethnographic interviews and focus groups to better understand the individual- and community-level knowledge, attitudes, and practices that potentially put participants at risk for zoonotic disease transmission from the animals they live and work with, across 6 interface domains. When we asked highly-exposed individuals (ie. bushmeat hunters, wildlife or guano farmers) about the risk they perceived in their occupational activities, most did not perceive it to be risky, whether because it was normalized by years (or generations) of doing such an activity, or due to lack of information about potential risks. Integrating the social sciences allows investigations of the specific human activities that are hypothesized to drive disease emergence, amplification, and transmission, in order to better substantiate behavioral disease drivers, along with the social dimensions of infection and transmission dynamics. Understanding these dynamics is critical to achieving health security--the protection from threats to health-- which requires investments in both collective and individual health security. Involving behavioral sciences into zoonotic disease surveillance allowed us to push toward fuller community integration and engagement and toward dialogue and implementation of recommendations for disease prevention and improved health security

Fluctuating Food Commodity Prices: A Complex Issue With No Easy Answers

Rising food demand, increased energy costs, a weak U.S. dollar, and other factors contributed to the rapid escalation of food commodity prices until July 2008

Why Another Food Commodity Price Spike?

Large and rapid increases have occurred for many food commodity prices during 2010-11. Long-term production and consumption trends underlay rising food commodity prices, but worldwide production shortfalls and changes in trade policies and practices in a number of countries sparked the sharp surge in prices after June 2010. Many of the long-term trends and short-run shocks contributing to the current price surge also played a role in previous price spikes

Factors contributing to the sharp rise, and then fall, in food commodity prices: 2002-2009 (PowerPoint)

Demand and Price Analysis,

Factors Contributing to Recent Increases in Food Commodity Prices (PowerPoint)

Presentation to USDA Economists Group, Washington, DC, 10 June 2008Food prices, commodities, biofuels, crop production, food demand, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Crop Production/Industries, Demand and Price Analysis, Food Security and Poverty, Risk and Uncertainty,