Agricultural Medicine

Newly updated, Agricultural Medicine: Rural Occupational Health, Safety, and Prevention, Second Editionis a groundbreaking and comprehensive textbook and reference for students and practitioners of public health, and professionals in the field of rural agricultural occupational health and safety. The book introduces specific occupational and environmental health and safety issues faced by agricultural workers and rural residents, and provides a roadmap to establishing sustainable worker and public health support in agricultural communities. Responding to reader demand, Agricultural Medicine, Second Edition now features more case studies, key point summaries, and new international perspective chapters comparing North American health and agricultural practices to those in Europe, the Asia Pacific, and South America. Agricultural health and safety engages a multidisciplinary team of medical professionals, veterinarians, safety professionals, engineers, sociologists, epidemiologists, and psychologists, for whom this book serves as an essential resource.

Focuses on both treatment and prevention of medical problems in a rural setting Comprehensive reference for family physicians providing care for patients in rural and agricultural areas Presents a practice-based approach

Agricultural employment is plagued with one of the highest levels of mortality among occupational groups in the United States, making the health and safety of farmers, farm workers, and farm residents a leading priority for epidemiologists, occupational health and safety professionals, rural health providers, public health practitioners, and extension agents and educators. Satisfying a growing need for a textbook on this significant aspect of public health, Agricultural Medicine is the first comprehensive textbook and reference for students of public health and health professionals in the field of rural medicine. Agricultural health and safety engages a multidisciplinary team of medical professionals, engineers, sociologists, epidemiologists, and psychologists for whom this book is an overdue yet essential reference. The authors bring a combined 60 years of practice, research, teaching, and scholarship in agricultural medicine to the design and content of this book. Their farm background and ownership add practicality and relevancy to their presentation. An overview of the industry and workforce—agricultural production in the global economy, demographics of the workforce, regulations, statistics, and organizations targeting agricultural health and safety—provides context for the broad but thorough coverage of diseases, infectious and toxic agents, and potential injuries to which agricultural populations are exposed daily.

A summary of discussions held at five conferences examining issues of health, safety and agriculture between 1992 and 1993.

Containing practical information on husbandry; cautions and directions for the preservation of health, management of the sick, &c. Designed for the use of families.

How we produce and consume food has a bigger impact on Americans' well-being than any other human activity. The food industry is the largest sector of our economy; food touches everything from our health to the environment, climate change, economic inequality, and the federal budget. From the earliest developments of agriculture, a major goal has been to attain sufficient foods that provide the energy and the nutrients needed for a healthy, active life. Over time, food production, processing, marketing, and consumption have evolved and become highly complex. The challenges of improving the food system in the 21st century will require systemic approaches that take full account of social, economic, ecological, and evolutionary factors. Policy or business interventions involving a segment of the food system often have consequences beyond the original issue the intervention was meant to address. A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System develops an analytical framework for assessing effects associated with the ways in which food is grown, processed, distributed, marketed, retailed, and consumed in the United States. The framework will allow users to recognize effects across the full food system, consider all domains and dimensions of effects, account for systems dynamics and complexities, and choose appropriate methods for analysis. This report provides example applications of the framework based on complex questions that are currently under debate: consumption of a healthy and safe diet, food security, animal welfare, and preserving the environment and its resources. A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System describes the U.S. food system and provides a brief history of its evolution into the current system. This report identifies some of the real and potential implications of the current system in terms of its health, environmental, and socioeconomic effects along with a sense for the complexities of the system, potential metrics, and some of the data needs that are required to assess the effects. The overview of the food system and the framework described in this report will be an essential resource for decision makers, researchers, and others to examine the possible impacts of alternative policies or agricultural or food processing practices.

For nearly a century, scientific advances have fueled progress in U.S. agriculture to enable American producers to deliver safe and abundant food domestically and provide a trade surplus in bulk and high-value agricultural commodities and foods. Today, the U.S. food and agricultural enterprise faces formidable challenges that will test its long-term sustainability, competitiveness, and resilience. On its current path, future productivity in the U.S. agricultural system is likely to come with trade-offs. The success of agriculture is tied to natural systems, and these systems are showing signs of stress, even more so with the change in climate. More than a third of the food produced is unconsumed, an unacceptable loss of food and nutrients at a time of heightened global food demand. Increased food animal production to meet greater demand will generate more greenhouse gas emissions and excess animal waste. The U.S. food supply is generally secure, but is not immune to the costly and deadly shocks of continuing outbreaks of food-borne illness or to the constant threat of pests and pathogens to crops, livestock, and poultry. U.S. farmers and producers are at the front lines and will need more tools to manage the pressures they face. Science Breakthroughs to Advance Food and Agricultural Research by 2030 identifies innovative, emerging scientific advances for making the U.S. food and agricultural system more efficient, resilient, and sustainable. This report explores the availability of relatively new scientific developments across all disciplines that could accelerate progress toward these goals. It identifies the most promising scientific breakthroughs that could have the greatest positive impact on food and agriculture, and that are possible to achieve in the next decade (by 2030).

This book was tbe result of a symposium beld at tbe American Cbernical Society meeting in Miami Beacb, Florida, September 10-15, 1989. The symposium was jointly sponsored by Tbe Society for Economfc Botany and tbe American Cbernical Society Food and Natural Product sub division. Tbere were five speakers. During tbe social sessions (mostly over drinks in abotel room), it became obvious tbat, regardless of tbe discipline, we were all speaking tbe same language. Yet, prior to tbe symposium, only a few of tbe participants knew one anotber. We decided to expand tbe symposium into a book. The book would, we boped, accomplish for otbers wbat we bad discovered in ourselves. That is, the field of Natural Products is broad, but similar in techniques and approach, ancient but modern, and bas been and continues to be extremely valuable to humankind. We wanted the book to serve as an introductory text for courses and as a reference work for the future. We also determined to include the structure of every chemical in the chapter where it was mentioned so the reader would not have to find the structure somewhere else or to try and deduce the structure from the chemical name. Little did we know what an undertaking these goals would be or the time this would take.