The Farm Bill is meant to supplement and secure farm incomes, ensure a stable food supply, and support the American farm economy. Over time, however, it has evolved into a system that creates substantial health impacts, both directly and indirectly. By generating more profit for food producers and less for family farmers; by effectively subsidizing the production of lower-cost fats, sugars, and...

Global fish production continues to outpace world population growth, and aquaculture remains one of the fastest-growing food producing sectors. In 2012, global aquaculture production was 90.4 million tonnes. Although, in terms of production tonnage, abalone contributes a relatively small proportion of this aquaculture production, it is one of the most highly prized seafood delicacies and, there...

In the summer of 2009, an outbreak of verocytotoxigenic Escherichia coli O157 (VTEC O157) was identified in visitors to a large petting farm in South East England. The peak attack rate was 6/1000 visitors, and highest in those aged <2 years (16/1000). We conducted a case-control study with associated microbiological investigations, on human, animal and environmental samples. We identified 93 ca...

Agricultural policy faces conflicting social goals. On one hand, efficient large-scale agriculture provides an adequate, low cost food supply, but many Americans continue to idealize the smaller family farm, believing that it promotes a democratic society with strong values. The changing structure of agriculture from many small farms to fewer but larger farms is a concern often expressed. Many ...

The four profitability measures recommended by the Farm Financial Standards Task Force have limitations for examining wealth creation. Non-farm corporations, by contrast, have started to use Economic Value Added (EVA) to measure wealth creation. EVA has some advantages over other financial ratios because it fully accounts for the resources used on the farm and it includes both realized and unre...

An important phase of a wind farm design is solving the Wind Farm Layout Optimization Problem (WFLOP), which consists in optimally positioning the turbines within the wind farm so that the wake effects are minimized and therefore the expected power production maximized. Although this problem has been receiving increasing attention from the scientific community, the existing approaches do not co...

roducers now have the tools (grain carts with load cells, yield monitors, GPS) to do on-farm field research. Additionally, growers are being made aware of more and more products/management options that they might use. One might read farm magazines, talk to neighbors, attend extension and industry presentations, but still wonder whether a particular recommendation would be of benefit. So the que...

Feed is a risk factor for poisoning the farm environment thus also fresh milk with pathogenic microorganisms of Listeria genus species. Listeria ivanovii, Listeria innocua, and Listeria seeligeri were isolated from 9.2%, but Listeria monocytogenes from 20.0% of feed samples. Most often different fodders (9.3%) and silage (4.7%) were contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes. Listeria genus speci...

We investigate biases in farm-level yield risk analysis caused by data aggregation from the farm-level to regional and national levels using the example of Swiss wheat and barley yields. The estimated yield variability decreases significantly with increasing level of aggregation, with crop yield variability at the farm-level being up to 2.38 times higher than indicated from national data. Our r...

Mixing of unfamiliar pigs is a standard management procedure in commercial pig production and is often associated with a period of intense and physically damaging aggression. Aggression is considered a problem for animal welfare and production. The objective of the present paper was to investigate the genetic background of aggressive behavior traits at mixing of unfamiliar gilts under 2 differe...