The Nature of the Future


Book Description

"In the seemingly mundane Northern farm of early America and the people who sought to improve its productivity and efficiency, Emily Pawley finds a world rich with innovative practices and marked by a developing interrelationship between scientific knowledge, industrial methods, and capitalism. Agricultural "improvers" became increasingly scientistic, driving tremendous increases in the range and volume of agricultural output-and transforming American conceptions of expertise, success, and exploitation. Pawley's focus on soil, fertilizer, apples, mulberries, agricultural fairs, and experimental stations shows each nominally dull subject to have been an area of intellectual ferment and sharp contestation: mercantile, epistemological, and otherwise"--




Teaching Children Science


Book Description

In the early twentieth century, a curriculum known as nature study flourished in major city school systems, streetcar suburbs, small towns, and even rural one-room schools. This object-based approach to learning about the natural world marked the first systematic attempt to introduce science into elementary education, and it came at a time when institutions such as zoos, botanical gardens, natural history museums, and national parks were promoting the idea that direct knowledge of nature would benefit an increasingly urban and industrial nation. The definitive history of this once pervasive nature study movement, TeachingChildren Science emphasizes the scientific, pedagogical, and social incentives that encouraged primarily women teachers to explore nature in and beyond their classrooms. Sally Gregory Kohlstedt brings to vivid life the instructors and reformers who advanced nature study through on-campus schools, summer programs, textbooks, and public speaking. Within a generation, this highly successful hands-on approach migrated beyond public schools into summer camps, afterschool activities, and the scouting movement. Although the rich diversity of nature study classes eventually lost ground to increasingly standardized curricula, Kohlstedt locates its legacy in the living plants and animals in classrooms and environmental field trips that remain central parts of science education today.




The Nature-study Review


Book Description







Design of Experiments for Agriculture and the Natural Sciences


Book Description

Written to meet the needs of both students and applied researchers, Design of Experiments for Agriculture and the Natural Sciences, Second Edition serves as an introductory guide to experimental design and analysis. Like the popular original, this thorough text provides an understanding of the logical underpinnings of design and analysis by selecting and discussing only those carefully chosen designs that offer the greatest utility. However, it improves on the first edition by adhering to a step-by-step process that greatly improves accessibility and understanding. Real problems from different areas of agriculture and science are presented throughout to show how practical issues of design and analysis are best handled. Completely revised to greatly enhance readability, this new edition includes: A new chapter on covariance analysis to help readers reduce errors, while enhancing their ability to examine covariances among selected variables Expanded material on multiple regression and variance analysis Additional examples, problems, and case studies A step-by-step MinitabĀ® guide to help with data analysis Intended for those in the agriculture, environmental, and natural science fields as well as statisticians, this text requires no previous exposure to analysis of variance, although some familiarity with basic statistical fundamentals is assumed. In keeping with the book's practical orientation, numerous workable problems are presented throughout to reinforce the reader's ability to creatively apply the principles and concepts in any given situation.




The Nature of the Farm


Book Description

A theoretical and empirical study of agricultural contracts and organization based on the transaction cost framework.




Handbook of Nature Study


Book Description




Nature's Matrix


Book Description

Landscapes are frequently seen as fragments of natural habitat surrounded by a 'sea' of agriculture. But recent ecological theory shows that the nature of these fragments is not nearly as important for conservation as is the nature of the matrix of agriculture that surrounds them. Local extinctions from conservation fragments are inevitable and must be balanced by migrations if massive extinction is to be avoided. High migration rates only occur in what the authors refer to as 'high quality' matrices, which are created by alternative agroecological techniques, as opposed to the industrial monocultural model of agriculture. The authors argue that the only way to promote such high quality matrices is to work with rural social movements. Their ideas are at odds with the major trends of some of the large conservation organizations that emphasize targeted land purchases of protected areas. They argue that recent advances in ecological research make such a general approach anachronistic and call, rather, for solidarity with the small farmers around the world who are currently struggling to attain food sovereignty.Nature's Matrix proposes a radically new approach to the conservation of biodiversity based on recent advances in the science of ecology plus political realities, particularly in the world's tropical regions.




On The Great Plains


Book Description

"To support his theory, Cunfer looks at the entire Great Plains (450 counties in ten states), tapping historical agricultural census data paired with GIS mapping to illuminate land use on the Great Plains over 130 years. Coupled with several community and family case studies, this database allows Cunfer to reassess the interaction between farmers and nature in the Great Plains agricultural landscape."--BOOK JACKET.