Browsing by Subject "Agroecology"
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Item Future learning landscapes: international agroecology education and outreach through online social networks and geographic information systems(2014-06) Runck, Bryan ChristopherChapter 1: Given that much of the learning about international agroecology would ideally occur outside the classroom, Adventure Learning (AL) and Systems Action Education (SAE) can offer synergistic approaches that synthesize these methodologies into a cohesive student learning experience. This paper reports on the evolution of a series of international agroecology courses offered from 2009 to 2011 that progressively integrated AL and SAE approaches in course design. The courses were taught by a University of Minnesota professor as he bicycled across Africa (2009 and 2010) and South America (2011), exploring various landscapes, crops, climatic regions and food systems with students back home via distance technologies. End-of-course survey responses indicated that students 1) did not find the course any more rigorous than similar level courses, 2) found the course much more unique (p < 0.01), and 3) increased their desire to travel abroad (p < 0.01). Our examination also revealed challenges and opportunities inherent with AL and SAE-merged classrooms. Overall, we found that AL and SAE approaches could be integrated to enhance agroecology education and can make courses inspiring, challenging, and rewarding. The result could have implications for schools that seek to prepare students to work in a global environment.Chapter 2: In response to calls to further synthesize Systems Action Education (SAE) and Adventure Learning (AL), a new action education framework is presented called the Extended Classroom Framework (ECF) for teaching systems of analysis of food systems. ECF integrates SAE and AL with the Circulatory System of Science (CSS) to describe how the experiential classroom interacts with society. In the fall of 2012, the ECF was utilized to design a hybrid course (e.g. half face-to-face, half online) at the undergraduate level that explored four different international agroecoregions through the perspective of on-the-ground collaborators. By utilizing online geographic information systems and an online social network, students digitally explored the agroecosystems as open-ended cases with the guidance of the local collaborator. A pre-test and post-test of the Intercultural Development Inventory and the New Ecological Paradigm survey were given to the students. Students also wrote four reflective journals throughout the semester that were coded and thematically analyzed. 85.5% of students showed significant positive shifts individually in the developed orientation (p < 0.05). Additionally, four out of seven students showed significant decreases in their intercultural orientation gap. Every student ended the course similarly or less culturally disengaged to a primary cultural group, with 85.7% of students in the resolved category, which compares with 57.1% at the beginning of the course. NEP Survey had a poor response rate, and was statistically insignificant. Student reflective journals illustrated growth in considering agroecosystems contextually and as coupled human-environmental systems. These results show that the ECF offers a viable framework for developing student capacities to engage wicked problems.Item Microbial Husbandry: Nurturing Microbes to Capture Soil Ecosystem Services(2018-09) Ewing, PatrickSoil microbes drive many agroecosystem functions that dictate crop productivity, environmental outcomes, and management costs. Chapter 2 introduces microbial husbandry, a framework to manage soil microbes by creating soil conditions that allow critical taxa to thrive. Subsequent chapters apply microbial husbandry to nutrient cycling under maize (Zea mays L.) using a model system, ridge tillage and rye cover cropping (Secale cereale L.). We tested hypotheses with Bayesian structural equation modeling. In Chapter 3, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) insured against early season phosphorus (P) deficiency: AMF contributed to 40% higher maize P uptake in ridge till, at a 7% growth cost. Managers may increase P uptake by reducing physical disturbance to increase AMF abundance, and by increasing bulk density beyond levels in chisel plow. For Chapter 4, we wrote pyroots, a Python computer vision module, to measure roots and fungal hyphae in environmental samples cheaply and reproducibly (Appendix A; www.github.com/pme1123/pyroots). We also reported the first AMF hyphal length density values at 60 cm depth. Hyphal growth was independent of maize root growth, which suggests roots and hyphae can be managed independently. In Chapter 5, filamentous fungi acquired as much mineral nitrogen (N) as maize roots over five weeks after planting. While most root N uptake occurred in rows, fungal uptake occurred in both rows and inter-rows. Managers may encourage fungal N uptake without competing with crop needs by concentrating crop residue in the inter-rows. Overall, microbial husbandry helped us manage competing microbial functions simultaneously: nutrient provisioning in rows, and fertility building in inter-rows. Context-appropriate management tools can create soil conditions that enable microbes to perform these functions.Item Social movement self-governance: the contentious nature of the alternative service provision by Brazil's Landless Workers Movement(2014-05) Pahnke, Anthony RobertThis puzzle is at the core of my dissertation: the coexistence of movements demanding change and establishing a form of order. Contemporary scholars do not include "governance" in the definition of what social movements do, as they consensually define social movements and contentious politics as non-state actors engaging in activities that challenge existing forms of economic, political, and/or cultural order (McAdam: 1988; 1996; Tarrow: 1998; Aminzade, et al: 2001; McAdam, et al: 2001). These studies focus on how opportunity structures are relatively "open" or "closed," but cannot tell us the ways movements develop when they see an opening, nor the sorts of organizational or institutional forms a movement adopts upon pursuing an opening. They also, typically, focus on movements such as the U.S. Civil Rights Movement or Environmental Movement that sought inclusion for previously marginalized communities into the exercise of formal, official power relations. Discussions of social movement-led counter-orders and service administration would explain these developments as part of a revolutionary situation, dual power, or breakdown of state authority (Tilly: 1977; Sirianni: 1983). Yet movements that govern are not revolutionary, because they seek recognition by state authority in their right to administer services like education and security, normally the prerogative of their governments, but as they see fit. I demonstrate this new form of social movement resistance - what I call self-governmental - through a case study of the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (Brazilian Landless Workers Movement or MST) and their variable success in governing agrarian reform, educational, and economic policy. Besides postulating this alternative mode of resistance, I develop a new social movement theory to explain successful mobilization and institutionalization that is rooted in the concept of strategy.