Explore sustainability, climate change, and renewable energy solutions. Learn how conservation, green technology, and policy decisions impact the future of our planet.
Empowering long-term sustainability is no easy feat. Many interrelated factors must be accounted for to ensure that the social, environmental, and economic elements of sustainability are incorporated into long-term solutions. As such, a holistic approach that uses various tools to bring about incremental and intelligent change is needed. Ecolabels contribute to such approaches as they…
The advent of modern information and communication technology (ICT) continues to offer a myriad of new opportunities for advancing and improving our lives. As populations migrate to urban spaces, it becomes only logical to utilize the data produced by ICT to catalyze such improvements. Smart cities are the embodiment of such efforts as they utilize…
Although much of the original motivation to settle America was fueled by a divine imperative to ‘go forth and conquer’ in the name of God, domestic farm policy also played a large role in motivating both citizens and newly arrived immigrants to settle the lands of the vast unknown. This began in the 1800s when…
Agriculture has been the backbone of communities throughout the United States since the birth of the nation. While the field has been wrought with controversy, it can also be considered innovative in many respects. Agricultural education is one of these areas… Until the mid-1800s, universities in the United States were mostly private organizations that focused…
What are the consequences of being different? Basic economic theory suggests that the person/place/thing that is different would either become more valuable if there is sufficient demand, or less valuable if there is limited demand. But, how does this relationship change if that which is different is not a person/place/thing, but is a culture or…
Perhaps you have heard the term open-source. Maybe you heard about it within the context of software and technology as the open-source movement originated within the software development community as a means to encourage innovation and knowledge sharing. As such, the open-source concept is best-known within the technological paradigm. However, the essence of open-source can…
Discover the advantages and disadvantages of agribusiness, from efficiency and economic growth to corporate control, market barriers, and sustainability concerns.
The whole world is dealing with the consequences of the novel coronavirus – everyone from the residents of European capitals to members of indigenous Amazonian tribes is feeling the effect. COVID-19 is the main topic of discussion and has been for a few months now and will continue to be for many months to come….
Good or bad, agribusiness is an undeniable part of the agricultural landscape. We often associate the concept with (bad) industry practices and giant corporations. These associations aren’t wrong, but there is so much more to agribusiness than widely- known cultural giants with poor social and environmental track records. So, what does agribusiness really mean? The…
Historically speaking, agriculture has been treated as a single, unified sector in which existing market mechanisms (most commonly government intervention) enabled the coordination of production and distribution. This approach failed to account for the activities engaged in by private entities, e.g. farmers or industries working with farmers. The common understanding of agriculture as a sector…