Introduction: the ecology of fencing.
In the autumn of 2004, a remarkable gathering of 102 scholars took place at St Antony's College, Oxford: they had come for an interdisciplinary symposium on 'Trees, rain, and politics in Africa: the dynamics and politics of climatic and environmental change'. Symposium papers were grouped into panels that focused...

Conservation/minimum tillage in California.
Conservation tillage has not been a widely used practice in California agriculture. In 2004, estimates indicated that only 0.3 percent of agricultural land in California used conservation tillage. If minimum tillage is added, the percentage goes up to 0.5 per cent. A study in 2006 indicated that the acreage...

Eating well, eating right.
Watch Sustainable Table, the 2006 documentary by producer and director Mischa Hedges, and the question, "What's for dinner?" will take on a whole new meaning. By serving its audience a critical look at the modern food industry, Sustainable Table puts issues of production and distribution front and center. Viewers...

U.S. poultry workers at risk for E. coli.
Poultry workers in the United States are 32 times more likely to carry E. coli bacteria resistant to the commonly used antibiotic gentamicin than the general population, according to a study in the December issue of Environmental Health Perspectives. The study, which focused on poultry workers and...

Papers please! Big farmer is watching.
BRANDI CALDERWOOD and her steer, Walker, were thrown out of the Colorado State Fair last year--not because Calderwood had cheated but because she hadn't registered Walker with the federal government. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is rolling out its National Animal Identification System (NAIS). The aim is...

A sustainable 24/7 culture in the schoolhouse.
Recently, I Googled the abbreviation 24/7 and received priority hits like supermarket, ATM, restaurants, concierge service and even an article on the transformation of Brooklyn, N.Y. After scanning 10 additional 24/7 Google pages, I was struck by the fact that not one connection was made between schools...

Shadow soldiers: Captain Justus Sherwood.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] After a lashing at the hands of the Green Mountain Boys in 1776, Captain Justus Sherwood escaped a sentence of life imprisonment and joined the British secret service. He became commanding officer of the spy corps and secretly negotiated to bring Vermont back into the...

Breaking the habit.
America, as even President Bush acknowledges, is addicted to oil. If so, then biofuels are little better than methadone. Our addiction is dangerous. It is one of the primary sources of the unchecked carbon emissions that are altering the Earth's atmosphere. It contributes to the pollution of...

The Ordinary Genius: A Life of Arnold Platt.
Ken Hoeppner. The Ordinary Genius: A Life of Arnold Platt. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2007. xiv + 308 pp. $29.95. Scholars are increasingly turning their attention to the rural history of the Canadian West. Much of their work centers on social and economic history, with subcategories...

The price of a shady lane: the trials and tribulations--and faith--involved in recreating a favorite memory with pin oaks on a Missouri farm.
More than thirty years ago, when Charlene and I bought the back forty, there was no access road into it. So in spite of my naturalist's dislike of seeing landscape torn open, I hired a bulldozer operator to rough out a lane across a field and through the woods...