Research | Recherche | Collaborations
CURRENT PROJECTS | Projets en Cours
Scoping and Storying Food Governance in Inuit Nunangat (2023 - 2028)
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Building on an INRS and VRM-funded pilot study on greenhouses in Inuit Nunangat, my colleague Magalie Quintal-Marineau and I were awarded a SSHRC Insight grant to expand the project to address food security and food sovereignty initiatives more broadly, with the goal of understanding their emergence in relation to a suite of interrelated factors, including urbanization, climate change, resource extraction, reconciliation, and Inuit self-determination. Our partners include the Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Human Services. The project brings into dialogue geographic literature on governance and Indigenous food sovereignty and contributes to a 'critical Northern geography' of food governance. Two main objectives guide the research:
1.To scope and characterize the formal governance (discourses and practices) of food security in Inuit Nunangat. Through archival work, interviews and workshops we aim to a) document the diverse institutional actors and networks involved in food's formal governance across Inuit Nunangat; b) identify the dominant discourses these institutional actors have used to frame food security; c) compare and contrast the discourses and practices promoted by these institutional actors, and evaluate their alignment with priorities laid out in the Inuit Nunangat Food Security Strategy (INFSS); d) characterize how food has been instrumentalized (discursively and programmatically) in Nunavik to serve a diversity of potentially conflicting goals (e.g., economic development, resource extraction, national security, reconciliation, Inuit self-determination). 2.To understand, document, and 'story' the everyday governance of food in Nunavik. Using participatory methodologies, including youth & elders storytelling sessions, we aim to a) examine how formal discourses and practices are interpreted, adopted, adapted, and/or refused by community-based organizations and Inuit; b) understand food's relation to land and well-being; c) document how these everyday practices contribute to "a self-determined and sustainable food system in Inuit Nunangat that reflects Inuit societal values, supports Inuit well-being, and ensures Inuit access to affordable, nutritious, safe, and culturally preferred foods" (as defined in INFSS); d) examine how spaces of encounter between Inuit youth & elders inform and shape the everyday governance of food and affirm Inuit food sovereignty. |
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Labo Équité Climat (2023 - 2027)
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My colleague at INRS Sophie Van Neste, Olivier Riffon (UQAC), and I are co-leading a three-year project funded by Ouranos and Mitacs called Labo Équité Climat that addresses equity in climate adaptation initiatives in Quebec. While climate change adaptation is crucial, there are concerns that such efforts may exacerbate existing inequalities in various ways: unequal distribution of their effects (distributive justice), disparity of opportunities, capacities and effects of participation (procedural justice), and incomplete and unequal recognition of diverse knowledges and experience and of various intersectional forms of oppression and discrimination. Working with researchers across Quebec (INRS, U Laval, UQAT, UQAC, CEGEP de Rivière-du-Loup) and community partners, the goal of the project is to bring together a wide range of knowledge and experience through a living lab co-produce an equity toolkit for climate change adaptation. Central to the project is the documentation and dissemination of stories and testimonials of people affected by climate change through a series of audio shorts produced by the C3V.
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Urban Self-Provisioning (2026 - ??)
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I was lucky to be part of a team to co-organize a Discovery Workshop funded by the CIFAR Arrell Future of Food Initiative. Our workshop on "The Urban Future of Food" brought together a team of brilliant researchers from a variety of disciplines -- history, agroecology, geography, public health, entomology, cultural studies -- and from around the world: Kate Brown (MIT, USA), Josh Arnold (U Mass Amherst, USA), Mikkel Thelle (Nationalmuseet, Denmark), Anne Brædder (Roskilde University, Denmark), Kyle Bobiwash (U Manitoba, Canada), Monika Egerer (Technische Universität München, Germany), Petr Jehlička (Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences), Daren Leung (Lingnan University, Hong Kong), Rirhandzu Marivate (South African Urban Food & Farming Trust), Oona Morrow (Wageningen U, Netherlands), and Hannah Neufeld (U Waterloo, Canada). Together we explored the concept of urban self-provisioning (USP) as a solution to contemporary environmental, social, and economic crises. We discussed various strategies of urban self-provisioning -- household plots, allotment gardens, urban farms, community and school gardens, informal food commons, food forests, community kitchens -- as well as gathering and fishing, as well as metabolic cycling activities such as composting. Over the two-day workshop, the group identified overlapping challenges and opportunities USP projects present. We examined successful models and identified potential pitfalls to methods for enhancing USP, drawing from historical and contemporary cases and ongoing qualitative and quantitative research from multiple regions. We also visited la Centrale agricole, an urban agriculture cooperative and innovation hub, to learn more about urban farming and sustainable food systems. We've applied for funding to continue the initiative for another two years... fingers crossed!
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PAST PROJECTS | Projets réalisés
Trajectoires afro-urbaines pour un système alimentaire durable et équitable : Comprendre les inclusions/exclusions dans l'agriculture urbaine à Montréal (2024-2025)
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Funded by a SSHRC Partnership Engagement grant and in collaboration with my colleague at INRS Leslie Touré Kapo and doctoral student Caroline Flory-Célini, and Conseil du système alimentaire montréalais (CSAM), this one-year project examines the inclusions and exclusions of Black Montrealers in the city's urban agriculture initiatives. Ce partenariat entre le Conseil du système alimentaire montréalais (CSAM) et des chercheur.e.s de l’INRS ambitionne d'approfondir la compréhension des dynamiques de l'agriculture urbaine (AU) au sein des communautés afrodescendantes noires de Montréal. En se focalisant sur des aspects cruciaux tels que l'insécurité alimentaire, la gouvernance, la participation, et la justice spatiale, l'objectif est d'influencer directement les politiques alimentaires montréalaises en tenant compte des besoins et des aspirations spécifiques de ces communautés.
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Compost Contested: An Urban Political Ecology of Municipal Organic Waste Governance in Montreal (2021 - 2024)
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“Compost – In 3 Acts”, I was invited to make this video for Das Kompost Festival – Die lebendige Kunst der Transformation, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Münster, Germany, 16 – 25 Jun 2022.
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Racial Capitalism, Settler Colonialism, and the City
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An area of theoretical interest more than a research project in and of itself, this is a theme that straddles several of my research projects. I organized a set of sessions for the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers with Anne Bonds (UW Milwaukee) and Ted Rutland (Concordia University) on the intersections of racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and processes of urban development. Originally scheduled for the 2020 meeting in Seattle and postponed to April 2021, we hosted two excellent sets of papers on Property/Value and Development/Blues/Resurgence, and a panel on Reflections/Visions. I then organized a pair of panels "Settler Colonial Urbanisms: Convergences, DIvergences, and Limits" with David Hugill (Carleton University) and my colleague at INRS Stéphane Guimont Marceau for the Institute of Australian Geographers and New Zealand Geographical Society Combined Meeting in July 2021. Stéphane and I put together a Debates & Interventions section for Urban Geography based on the sessions, featuring eight contributions from a stellar group of scholars. To date, I've also published an article in Geography Compass, entitled Urban agriculture, racial capitalism, and resistance in the settler-colonial city, and a book chapter in The New Urban Ruins, entitled Nullius no more? Valorising vacancy through urban agriculture in the settler-colonial 'green city', which connect this theme to my work on urban agriculture and green gentrification.
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CommunoSerre : Intégration socio-technologique des serres communautaires et solidaires dans des quartiers urbains défavorisés (2021 - 2023)
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A collaboration between social scientists, environmental scientists, and engineers, CommunoSerre is an INRS-funded interdisciplinary project focusing on the social and technical challenges and possibilities of incorporating community and/or social economy greenhouses in the neighbourhoods hit hardest by the pandemic in Montréal. Greenhouses are often promoted as a silver bullet for year-round food production in cold climates, but as social scientists have explained for decades, food insecurity is function of poverty and purchasing power than of proximity and production. Are greenhouses the way to go? What do community members think? What is the risk of contributing to green gentrification? What are the possibilities for contributing to food justice and food security? And on the technical side, can they be integrated into the existing built environment and heated using energy captured from other structures? How can their efficiency be improved and GHG emissions reduced? How can they be built in a way that is low-cost and affordable? I'm co-leading the project with Jasmin Raymond (INRS-ETE), with the collaboration of Sophie Van Neste (INRS-UCS), Geneviève Bordeleau (INRS-ETE), Louis-César Pasquier (INRS-ETE), Didier Haillot (ÉTS), Danielle Monfet (ÉTS), and Éric Duchemin (AU/LAB). Doctoral students Caroline Flory-Célini and Sugir Selliah and master's student Sophie Lavoie took the lead on the social aspects of the project, and Dr. Chantal Gailloux authored the final report and toolkit. Here's an interview in La Presse about the project, another in Québec Science and a discussion about the project on Radio-Canada's On va se le dire. Sophie and I and our students published this article on the everyday governance of these serres solidaires in Urban Studies.
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The Portland Black Gardens Project (2017 - 2020)
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Listen to Viviane Barnett tell the story of Green Fingers during First Lady Pat Nixon's visit to Portland on June 16th, 1969.
Photos courtesy of The Oregonian. Recording courtesy of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library & Museum. |
RESTING SAFE: Street Science for Environmental Justice in Houseless Communities (2020 - 2023)
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I collaborated on a community-based participatory research project called RESTING SAFE, which examined environmental justice issues in rest areas (or encampments) for houseless individuals. The project brought together houseless community leaders from two communities – one in Portland and one in Baltimore – and activist-researchers to investigate and intervene in environmental hazards in the places where houseless people are building homes. The goal of the project was to provide houseless communities with information about their sites' precise types and levels of pollution, and a toolkit to help community members reduce risks themselves, or to push government agencies to do so. A storymap of one site in Portland, Hazelnut Grove, is in the works, as are a couple of articles on 'citizen science' and land use history as a method. It was an honor to working with an amazing team that includes several former students on this project, funded by the Antipode Foundation and NSF.
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Urban agriculture, social, and environmental change in Metropolitan Montreal (2017 - 2021)
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Funded by the climatology research institute Ouranos and the Institut National de Santé Publique du Québec, this project complements my work in Portland and Vancouver. My colleagues Éric Duchemin (AU/LAB) and Hiên Pham (UQÀM) and I investigated UA's potential contributions to climate change adaptation in five municipalities in Metropolitan Montreal. Building on my methodological approach with the NSF project, the 3-year project, entitled "Agriculture urbaine comme infrastructure verte de résilience", integrated mapping, surveys, and interviews to assess UA's socio-spatial variability across the region and its contributions to household food consumption. Read the final report and a BD/comic strip summary of the research in French and English illustrated by Mélika Bazin. See our article in Applied Geography.
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Urban agriculture, eco-gentrification, and equity in the Sustainable City (2012 - 2020)
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This project focused on the relationship between UA policy, practice, and political economy, with particular attention to the ways in which UA is entangled in processes of gentrification and investment in the “sustainable city”, and the role of UA advocates in policymaking forums. Funded by the National Science Foundation, I collaborated with Eugene McCann and Christiana Miewald at Simon Fraser University on a series of reports, maps, chapters, and articles presenting the results of our comparative study (2015-2020) of these processes in Portland, OR and Vancouver, BC. An article in IJURR rethinks urban agriculture governance based on our findings, and an article in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers lays out the some of the theoretical framework for understanding green gentrification. Another article on temporary forms of UA as a sustainability fix has been published in Environment & Planning E: Nature & Space. Visit www.UrbanAg.info for details or click on the images below to access the publications.
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Portland-Hartley Bay Exchange (2016 - 2019)
I worked with Dr. Max Ritts (Clark University), POIC/Rosemary Anderson High School in Portland, and the Gitga'at First Nation in Hartley Bay, BC, Canada on a weeklong youth exchange, that brought together youth leaders from two very different communities to work together on environmental concerns and challenges. RAHS is a small alternative high school operated by Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center (POIC), where diverse youth from low-income areas in Portland find mentorship and a fresh start. Hartley Bay is a remote community located 4 hours south of Prince Rupert on BC's North Coast. Youth from Portland traveled to Gitga'at territory to learn about the Gitga'at Nation's efforts to protect their ancestral homeland in the face of oil and gas production and a changing climate, while youth from Hartley Bay and Prince Rupert have traveled to Portland to learn about social and environmental challenges facing Portland's diverse communities. |
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Agriculture MTL-PDX: Comparing UA policy, practice, and participation in Montréal and Portland (2014 - 2016)
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This project, funded by a grant from the Government of Québec, incorporated a research project and a field course/exchange conducted in Aug/Sep 2015 in partnership with Éric Duchemin at UQÀM’s AU/Lab and students from PSU, UQÀM, and UdeM. Situating our research within theoretical debates over collaborative planning and “post-politics” of sustainability, our PSU team evaluated recent participatory planning initiatives related to UA in both cities, as well as exploring the role of UA in gentrification in both cities. The project also funded MUS student Claire Bach's thesis work on the spatial politics of UA in Montreal. Claire and I co-authored an article based on this work published in Environment & Planning C: Politics & Space.
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Survey of UA organizations and businesses in the US and Canada (2013 - 2014)
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Mike Simpson and I conducted a survey of urban agriculture initiatives to better understand the practices, motivations, networks, labor and funding sources, and on-the-ground needs or UA organizations and businesses. We released a report of our preliminary results in 2014. Based on this survey, our article in Agriculture and Human Values identifies and describes six diverse but overlapping "motivational frames" - Entrepreneurial, Sustainable Development, Eco-Centric, Educational, DIY Secessionist, and Radical - employed by practitioners engaging in UA.
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PDX Garden Stories (2015- 2016)
Over two years, my senior capstone students and I conducted interviews with 20 participants in various programs of the non-profit Growing Gardens. Transcripts of the interviews, as well, as short A/V clips of the various gardeners are posted to the project website, and also linked to Julian Agyeman's collection of various food justice initiatives across the country.
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Who is at the table? Fostering anti-oppression practice through food justice dialogues (2013)
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Developed together with masters students Jen Turner, Alex Novie, and Monica Cuneo, and Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies faculty Sally Eck, this participatory workshop series held in early 2013 provided Portland’s social justice and food systems activists the opportunity to collaborate, learn, network, and co-produce anti-oppression strategies with the goal of fostering the multi-racial, multi-ethnic, cross-class alliances necessary to transform the food movement into an integrated effort that emphasizes both food systems and social justice. It was funded by a grant from PSU’s Institute for Sustainable Solutions. You can read about the project in a chapter in an edited volume entitled Sustainable Solutions: Let Knowledge Serve the City.
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Assessment and toolkit for the Urban Farm Collective (2012 - 2014)
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My Senior Capstone class and I worked in collaboration with Portland’s Urban Farm Collective to analyze the impact of the organization’s work and to make recommendations for how to better engage a more diverse community in light of gentrification in Inner NE Portland. In 2014, we developed a food justice framework and outreach plan for the Collective.
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Cultivating the Commons: Scaling up urban agriculture in Oakland (2008 - 2011)
This multi-year project was the focus of my doctoral dissertation work at UC Berkeley. My dissertation advisor at Berkeley was Nathan Sayre, and I also worked closely with my committee members Dick Walker, Jason Corburn, and Gary Sposito, and an advisory committee comprised of representatives from city agencies, community members, and non-profits. Research was funded in part by a mini-grant from the HOPE Collaborative and sponsored by City Slicker Farms. My team of undergraduate research assistants and volunteers and I inventoried vacant and underutilized public land in Oakland in order to assess its possible contribution to urban food production. The resulting report, Cultivating the Commons (released in November 2009, revised in 2010), has been used by the Oakland Food Policy Council to inform municipal food policy in its report, Transforming Oakland's Food System: A Plan for Action, and by the Oakland Climate Coalition for the Energy and Climate Action Plan. As soil contamination may be an obstacle to the expansion of urban agriculture at some sites, we conducted soil sampling at about 120 of the vacant sites we identified, and used GIS to map and analyze concentrations of lead (Pb). Preliminary assessment of 20 sites in July 2009 was funded by a pilot research grant from the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources Analytical Lab in Davis, CA. Funding from the National Science Foundation allowed us to expand our sampling to 100 additional sites throughout Oakland in 2010. We also conducted an experiment at UC Berkeley's Oxford Tract Greenhouses and collected plant tissue samples at selected urban gardens to assess the bioavailability of Pb in urban soils. At the site-scale, we located potential "hot spots" where metals levels are high enough to be of concern; similarly, at the neighborhood- and municipal-scales, we identified areas in need of further assessment before food production proceeds. The project resulted in articles published in Applied Geography, Landscape & Urban Planning, and the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems & Community Development, Local Environment, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy & Society, and a chapter in the edited volume Cultivating Food Justice. I revisited the dataset for an article in published in Geoforum, in which I develop a "critical physical geography" of urban soil contamination.
This multi-year project was the focus of my doctoral dissertation work at UC Berkeley. My dissertation advisor at Berkeley was Nathan Sayre, and I also worked closely with my committee members Dick Walker, Jason Corburn, and Gary Sposito, and an advisory committee comprised of representatives from city agencies, community members, and non-profits. Research was funded in part by a mini-grant from the HOPE Collaborative and sponsored by City Slicker Farms. My team of undergraduate research assistants and volunteers and I inventoried vacant and underutilized public land in Oakland in order to assess its possible contribution to urban food production. The resulting report, Cultivating the Commons (released in November 2009, revised in 2010), has been used by the Oakland Food Policy Council to inform municipal food policy in its report, Transforming Oakland's Food System: A Plan for Action, and by the Oakland Climate Coalition for the Energy and Climate Action Plan. As soil contamination may be an obstacle to the expansion of urban agriculture at some sites, we conducted soil sampling at about 120 of the vacant sites we identified, and used GIS to map and analyze concentrations of lead (Pb). Preliminary assessment of 20 sites in July 2009 was funded by a pilot research grant from the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources Analytical Lab in Davis, CA. Funding from the National Science Foundation allowed us to expand our sampling to 100 additional sites throughout Oakland in 2010. We also conducted an experiment at UC Berkeley's Oxford Tract Greenhouses and collected plant tissue samples at selected urban gardens to assess the bioavailability of Pb in urban soils. At the site-scale, we located potential "hot spots" where metals levels are high enough to be of concern; similarly, at the neighborhood- and municipal-scales, we identified areas in need of further assessment before food production proceeds. The project resulted in articles published in Applied Geography, Landscape & Urban Planning, and the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems & Community Development, Local Environment, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy & Society, and a chapter in the edited volume Cultivating Food Justice. I revisited the dataset for an article in published in Geoforum, in which I develop a "critical physical geography" of urban soil contamination.
Baseline agroecological assessment and farmer needs survey in Haiti's Central Plateau (2004 - 2005)
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I worked with the French non-governmental organization Zanmi Lasante Paris, which operates in coordination with Partners in Health, to conduct a farmer needs assessment in the Plateau Central. We interviewed 200 farmers in more than a dozen villages, as well as conducted a baseline survey of agroecological characteristics and farming practices. The report (also published in French) was quoted in the opening lines in a National Geographic article on soil in Haiti. More importantly, the research laid the groundwork for a "training of trainers" workshop in June 2005 for extensionists working with two peasant organizations, ASEDECC and SOPABO. I developed the training materials (in Kreyòl) with fellow NCSU alum Arthur "Gill" Green (Okanagan College). Li rezime rapò a an Kreyol.
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Sustainable soil management and regenerative agriculture in Senegal's Peanut Basin (2003 - 2004)
I took a semester off from my thesis research in North Carolina to work with The Rodale Institute, which at the time had an office in Thiès, Senegal. The Joor soils of Senegal's Peanut Basin are inherently low in organic matter, limiting yields of millet and other crops and threatening the food security of smallholders. We conducted a series of focus groups and interviews in eight villages to characterize site-specific fertility management practiced by farmers in the Peanut Basin. On-site measurements revealed little significant difference between the effects of compost and manure on peanut and millet growth, but significant increases over unamended areas. Similarly, chemical analysis revealed increased cation exchange capacity and nutrient concentrations in soils amended with compost or manure. Similarities in the chemical characteristics of compost and traditional pile manure (sentaare) suggest that development workers could emphasize improved pile management rather than promoting more labor-intensive composting. See the resulting article in the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability. The Rodale Institute hired me the next year to identify and interview innovative farmers across Senegal for a series of thirteen stories, Sustainable in Senegal, published in Rodale's online NewFarm magazine.
I took a semester off from my thesis research in North Carolina to work with The Rodale Institute, which at the time had an office in Thiès, Senegal. The Joor soils of Senegal's Peanut Basin are inherently low in organic matter, limiting yields of millet and other crops and threatening the food security of smallholders. We conducted a series of focus groups and interviews in eight villages to characterize site-specific fertility management practiced by farmers in the Peanut Basin. On-site measurements revealed little significant difference between the effects of compost and manure on peanut and millet growth, but significant increases over unamended areas. Similarly, chemical analysis revealed increased cation exchange capacity and nutrient concentrations in soils amended with compost or manure. Similarities in the chemical characteristics of compost and traditional pile manure (sentaare) suggest that development workers could emphasize improved pile management rather than promoting more labor-intensive composting. See the resulting article in the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability. The Rodale Institute hired me the next year to identify and interview innovative farmers across Senegal for a series of thirteen stories, Sustainable in Senegal, published in Rodale's online NewFarm magazine.
Compost and vermicompost production and utilization in sustainable farming systems (2002 - 2004)
My MS research focused on compost production and use in sustainable farming systems. My MS thesis research at North Carolina State University's Department of Crop Science focused on compost production and utilization in an organic farming system in North Carolina and in a smallholder subsistence farming system in semi-arid West Africa. Working under Dr. Noah Ranells and Dr. Nancy Creamer, I conducted an experiment was conducted at the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) in Goldsboro, NC, to compare methods of composting separated solid swine waste and various rates of wheat straw, and another experiment was conducted at CEFS and Central Carolina Community College's Sustainable Farming Program's Land Lab in Pittsboro, NC, to evaluate the integration of compost with cover crops, both common sources of fertility in organic farming systems. I synthesized some of this research in a Cooperative Extension bulletin. My work in Senegal (see above) also made it into my master's thesis.
My MS research focused on compost production and use in sustainable farming systems. My MS thesis research at North Carolina State University's Department of Crop Science focused on compost production and utilization in an organic farming system in North Carolina and in a smallholder subsistence farming system in semi-arid West Africa. Working under Dr. Noah Ranells and Dr. Nancy Creamer, I conducted an experiment was conducted at the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) in Goldsboro, NC, to compare methods of composting separated solid swine waste and various rates of wheat straw, and another experiment was conducted at CEFS and Central Carolina Community College's Sustainable Farming Program's Land Lab in Pittsboro, NC, to evaluate the integration of compost with cover crops, both common sources of fertility in organic farming systems. I synthesized some of this research in a Cooperative Extension bulletin. My work in Senegal (see above) also made it into my master's thesis.
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