Agriculture And Life

This textbook teaches crucial statistical methods to answer research questions using a unique range of statistical software programs, including MINITAB and R. This textbook is developed for undergraduate students in agriculture, nursing, biology and biomedical research. Graduate students will also find it to be a useful way to refresh their statistics skills and to reference software options. The unique combination of examples is approached using MINITAB and R for their individual strengths. Subjects covered include among others data description, probability distributions, experimental design, regression analysis, randomized design and biological assay. Unlike other biostatistics textbooks, this text also includes outliers, influential observations in regression and an introduction to survival analysis. Material is taken from the author's extensive teaching and research in Africa, USA and the UK. Sample problems, references and electronic supplementary material accompany each chapter.

As seen on the BBC’s This Farming Life The inspirational story of Lynbreck Croft—a regenerative Scottish farm rooted in local food, community, and the dreams of two women. Lynn and Sandra left their friends, family, and jobs in England to travel north to Scotland to find a bit of land that they could call their own. They had in mind keeping a few chickens, a kitchen garden, and renting out some camping space; instead, they fell in love with Lynbreck Croft—150 acres of opportunity and beauty, shrouded by the Cairngorms and deep in the Highlands of Scotland. But they had no money, no plan, and no experience in farming. In Our Wild Farming Life, Lynn and Sandra recount their experiences as they work out what kind of farmers they want to be, learning how to work with Highland cattle, become part of the crofting community, and understand how they can farm with nature to produce food for themselves and the people around them. “Through their journey to becoming farmers,” as The Guardian recently wrote, “it’s clear that nature and the health of the environment plays a central role in everything they do, from planting 17,500 native broadleaf trees for wood pasture to setting aside 22 hectares for rewilding.” And through efforts like these, Lynn and Sandra have been able to combine regenerative farming practices with old crofting traditions to keep their own personal values intact. Our Wild Farming Life is what happens when you follow your dreams of living on the land; a story of how two people became farmers—and how they learned to make a living from it, their way.

The author gives background information on soil nutrients and advises how to treat the soil without slowly killing it, and with a higher food quality as result

Agriculture to Zoology: Information Literacy in the Life Sciences sets the stage for purposefully integrating information literacy activities within the subject-specific content of the life sciences. The book is written for librarians and other professionals who teach information literacy skills, especially those in the science disciplines, and most especially the life sciences. It is also intended to be helpful to secondary school teachers, college faculty who teach life science-related subjects, library school students, and others interested in information literacy and science education. Anyone wanting to learn more about the Earth’s life sciences, from citizen to scientist, will benefit as well. The book’s seven chapters fill a gap with varying perspectives of literacy instruction in the life sciences and include resources identified by academic librarians as important for use in subject-specific research in higher education. Contributors are longtime specialists in the fields of the life sciences, science and information literacy, scientific and electronic communication, assessment, and more, including Arctic and Antarctic information. Specialized focus on information literacy in the life science disciplines, rather than information literacy in general Discussion of library instruction, featuring methods, tools, and assignments to engage students in different areas of the life sciences Chapters on specific life science subjects highlight traditional as well as non-traditional sources

Managing water resources is one of the most pressing challenges of our times - fundamental to how we feed 2 billion more people in coming decades, eliminate poverty, and reverse ecosystem degradation. This Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture, involving more than 700 leading specialists, evaluates current thinking on water and its interplay with agriculture to help chart the way forward. It offers actions for water management and water policy - to ensure more equitable and effective use. This assessment describes key water-food-environment trends that influence our lives today and uses scenarios to explore the consequences of a range of potential investments. It aims to inform investors and policymakers about water and food choices in light of such crucial influences as poverty, ecosystems, governance, and productivity. It covers rainfed agriculture, irrigation, groundwater, marginal-quality water, fisheries, livestock, rice, land, and river basins. Ample tables, graphs, and references make this an invaluable work for practitioners, academics, researchers, and policymakers in water management, agriculture, conservation, and development. Published with IWMI.

This volume explores problems in the history of science at the intersection of life sciences and agriculture, from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Taking a comparative national perspective, the book examines agricultural practices in a broad sense, including the practices and disciplines devoted to land management, forestry, soil science, and the improvement and management of crops and livestock. The life sciences considered include genetics, microbiology, ecology, entomology, forestry, and deal with US, European, Russian, Japanese, Indonesian, Chinese contexts. The book shows that the investigation of the border zone of life sciences and agriculture raises many interesting questions about how science develops. In particular it challenges one to re-examine and take seriously the intimate connection between scientific development and the practical goals of managing and improving – perhaps even recreating – the living world to serve human ends. Without close attention to this zone it is not possible to understand the emergence of new disciplines and transformation of old disciplines, to evaluate the role and impact of such major figures of science as Humboldt and Mendel, or to appreciate how much of the history of modern biology has been driven by national ambitions and imperialist expansion in competition with rival nations.

Describes daily life in the farming community of Monticello, Wisconsin.

The story told by The Persistence of Subsistence Agriculture begins 8,000 years ago as humans began using the land and weather to provide themselves with food, housing, and clothing. Productive farmers took care of most daily needs within the small conservative world in which they lived. This world organized around small-scale subsistence farming is ending as the ancient world of farmers has given away to that dominated by the modern marketplace. This book is about how the modern market world transformed these remote agricultural farmers. Waters uses diverse examples to illustrate how the modern market economy captured persistent subsistence farmers and forever altered life in 18th century Scotland, 19th century United States, 20th century Tanzania, and indeed, the entire modern world.