The increasing popularity of urban agriculture as a method of localizing food systems has created a mounting need to address soil pollution in urban farms. Lead is an especially pervasive pollutant in urban soils with a number of detrimental health effects. Phytoremediation, the use of plants to extract or degrade pollutants, has shown promise for cleaning up leadcontaminated soils, yet its pot...

the best deal. nowhere is more real than today business environment which affect the success or otherwise of any business venture. several authors have attributed failure of businesses particularly small and medium scale enterprises to various factors ranging from training of the entrepreneur to exposure and experience while some analysts opined that business environment could impact on small a...

Increased prices for nonrenewable heating fuels (such as propane, heating oil, and natural gas) have residential and farm consumers seeking more sustainable solutions to their heating needs. Price increases among these fuels will remain a trend as a combination of decreased reserves and increased demand continues to limit supply (EIA, 2012). Pellets produced from abundant biomass sources—such a...

In the country, livestock is firmly integrated into the economic structure of farm and village life. Livestock raising is being recognized as a key element which contributes to rural income and to the efficient use of the available resources in the rural sector. The raising of farm animals is still on a small scale basis since it is intimately tied-in with farmers' activities and way of life. C...

Draft animal power (DAP) has been identified as an environmentally friendly technology that is based on renewable energy and encompasses integration of livestock and crop production systems. Draft animal technology provides farmers with a possibility to cheaply access and use manure from the draft animals and farm power needed to apply renewable practices for land intensification. Compared to m...

in this paper, a numerical solution procedure is presented for the forced vibration of a piezoelectric nanowire under thermo-electro-mechanical loads based on the nonlocal elasticity theory within the framework of timoshenko beam theory. using hamilton’s principle, the nonlocal governing differential equations are derived. the governing equations and the related boundary conditions are discreti...

Farming is a complex occupation, comprising a spectrum of activities that range from small-scale hobby farms to large-scale corporate farms. The activities, and thus the occupational exposures, on a farm are dictated by the type and size of the farm, as well as cultivation practices [1]. The farmers themselves are also diverse, living and working on farms alone or with family members or employe...