The thesis studies the political participation of Thai farmers and focuses on two main factors, namely the domestic and the external impacts, which inform the case studies of rice, sugarcane, and potato farmers groups. Overall, the research has established that farmers groups have felt the impacts of domestic factors far more strongly than external factors. Furthermore, through comparative studies in relation to the case studies of rice, sugarcane, and potato farmers groups in Thailand, differences emerged between these three Thai farmers groups, in terms of the degree to which domestic factors impacted on their political participation. The theories of Western interest groups are reviewed, in order to examine their applicability to explaining farmers groups formation in Thailand. The concepts of 'collective benefits' and 'selective incentives', which were used by Mancur Olson have been adopted as the main theoretical framework. With reference to this, the research has established that selective incentives have played a highly significant role in Thai farmers groups formation, and concludes that the problems of mobilisation, which relate to rice, sugarcane, and potato farmers groups, have been solved primarily through the provision of a range of selective incentives by the farmers groups themselves. In order to classify the differing levels of political participation of Thai farmers groups, the analytical framework provided by Grant Jordan, Darren Halpin, and William Maloney has been utilised. Accordingly, the rice and potato farmers groups are classified as 'potential pressure participants', whilst the sugarcane farmers group is classified as an 'interest group', which has enabled an examination of their political participation through the Western concept of the policy network/community framework. In order to make the Western policy network/community framework more applicable to the policy-making process in Thailand, the specific, dominant characteristics of the Thai political culture, namely the patronage system and the operation of both vote-buying and corruption are included in the analysis. This conceptual stretching does not significantly affect the original concept of the framework and the way in which it was intended to be applicable, because it already includes informal relationships such as those, which exist within the policy network/community framework. This understanding is an important aspect, which forms a part of the theoretical contribution to the discipline of international political economy and to the arena of Thai political studies. The policy network/community framework provides a new conceptual lens in the study of the political participation of Thai farmers groups. Accordingly, these arguments promote the opportunity to consider alternative frameworks in the analysis of the political participation of Thai farmers groups, and group participation across civil society more generally. The study of the political participation of Thai farmers has utilised empirical evidence, which illustrates the successes of farmers' interest groups in both Japan and the United Kingdom, in order to explain the relative successes and failures of Thai farmers. In contrast to the experiences of Western and notably Japanese farmers groups, in many respects Thai farmers are largely excluded from the policy-making process, with the only exception in Thailand being certain sugarcane farmers groups. The thesis concludes that the political participation of farmers groups in Thailand has generally been affected by domestic impacts rather than by external impacts, and that their influence in domestic policy-making has been, and is likely to remain for the foreseeable future at least, somewhat limited.

abstract: Sinaloa, a coastal state in the northwest of Mexico, is known for irrigated conventional agriculture, and is considered one of the greatest successes of the Green Revolution. With the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s, Sinaloa farmers shifted out of conventional wheat, soy, cotton, and other commodities and into white maize, a major food staple in Mexico that is traditionally produced by millions of small-scale farmers. Sinaloa is now a major contributor to the national food supply, producing 26% of total domestic white maize production. Research on Sinaloa's maize has focused on economic and agronomic components. Little attention, however, has been given to the environmental sustainability of Sinaloa's expansion in maize. With uniquely biodiverse coastal and terrestrial ecosystems that support economic activities such as fishing and tourism, the environmental consequences of agriculture in Sinaloa are important to monitor. Agricultural sustainability assessments have largely focused on alternative agricultural approaches, or espouse alternative philosophies that are biased against conventional production. Conventional agriculture, however, provides a significant portion of the world's calories. In addition, incentives such as federal subsidies and other institutions complicate transitions to alternative modes of production. To meet the agricultural sustainability goals of food production and environmental stewardship, we must put conventional agriculture on a more sustainable path. One step toward achieving this is structuring agricultural sustainability assessments around achievable goals that encourage continual adaptations toward sustainability. I attempted this in my thesis by assessing conventional maize production in Sinaloa at the regional/state scale using network analysis and incorporating stakeholder values through a multicriteria decision analysis approach. The analysis showed that the overall sustainability of Sinaloa maize production is far from an ideal state. I made recommendations on how to improve the sustainability of maize production, and how to better monitor the sustainability of agriculture in Sinaloa. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Sustainability 2011

Food and energy security are two key environmental challenges currently faced by mankind. The principles behind organic farming are to promote environmental sustainability; however within the organic standards the use of renewable energy is only a suggested method with which to achieve this. If organic farmers can successfully utilise anaerobic digesters, they could contribute towards the provision of both food and energy security using one holistic system. Within this thesis, the suitability of anaerobic digesters on organic farms was explored using methods from ecological, sociological and environmental sciences. This enabled both the practical and theoretical issues behind the question of whether it is suitable for anaerobic digesters to be used on organic farms to be addressed. Field and laboratory experiments were used to compare the effects digestate and slurry had on earthworms, grass and weeds. Digestate and slurry had species dependent effects on earthworms during both LD50 / LT50 experiments and behavioural bioassays; Lumbricus terrestris survived longer in slurry and showed a behavioural preference towards slurry over digestate, whereas Eisenia fetida showed the opposite responses. Fertiliser application rates over 170 kg N ha-1 were found to be harmful to both species of earthworm. Suppressed germination effects were seen on thistles treated with digestate compared with no treatment (F0.56,19.66 =4.66, P < 0.01), whilst grass fertilised with digestate had a greater total mass than grass fertilised with slurry or left unfertilised (F2,27 =17.92, P < 0.001). Questionnaires and interviews were used to obtain a better understanding of the opinions farmers had about anaerobic digesters. Organic farmers believed renewable energy generation fitted well within organic principles, but using an anaerobic digester on an organic farm was less practical than on a conventional farm. This was due to multiple reasons including lack of information, poor associated finances, and that existing digesters are currently unsuitable for small organic farms. There was also support for anaerobic digesters to be on dairy farms- this was regardless of whether the farm was organic or conventional. Two case-study farms were used to assess the impact an anaerobic digester would have on the farms total GHG emissions. An anaerobic digester on the dairy farm was calculated to reduce GHG emissions by up to 24%, while for the mixed farm, the maximum reduction was by 20%. This was primarily due to the fact that the dairy farm benefitted from a higher volume of feedstock and proposed to use the biogas in a more energy efficient manner by producing electricity rather than vehicle fuel. Due to the high emissions associated with keeping livestock, both case studies needed to import additional feedstock if the farms were to achieve zero net GHG emissions. The answer to whether anaerobic digesters can be suitable for organic farms was judged on how well they complimented or conflicted with IFOAM’s definition of organic farming. Three main aspects of their definition were chosen and evidence from each chapter used to address the main question of the thesis. In conclusion, anaerobic digesters are theoretically suitable for use on organic farms, but are generally more practical for use on conventional farm systems. Across both farm systems the most suitable enterprises to adopt anaerobic digesters are dairy farms. This highlights the need for suitability of new systems to be assessed on a case-by-case scenario when trying to maximise positive impacts from new technologies.

Livestock-based agriculture plays an important role in the development of sub-saharan Africa, especially those countries whose livestock industry contributes significantly to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In Kenya, agriculture alone accounts for 21% of the GDP and provides employment directly or indirectly to over 75% of the total labour force. The livestock industry, mainly arid rangelands, contributes 50% of the agricultural productivity. However, these Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs) are exposed to a myriad of risks affecting the environment which is the pastoral core asset. These risks arise from climatic change and variability, growth in human population and expanding settlements, changes in the land use systems, poor infrastructure, diseases, wildlife predation, and inter-ethnic conflicts. The consequences of these pastoral risks include: (1) declining per capita asset value, (2) increased health problems, (3) increased poverty, and (4) declining GDP generated from pastoralism. While a lot of resources have been invested in responding to the pastoral crisis associated with droughts, there is still inadequate understanding of the policy measures to put in place as mitigation strategies. The aims of this research are (1) identify the main pastoral risks and community response strategies, (2) assess the impact the identified risks on the wellbeing of pastoralists based on financial, human, physical, natural and social capital measurements (5 C‘s), and (3) develop a System Dynamics (SD) model to assess the holistic impact of community and government response strategies on pastoral wellbeing. Samburu district, in northern Kenya, was chosen as a study area because it is classified as 100% ASAL and experiences frequent droughts and changing land use systems. The research process involved literature synthesis, analysis of both cross-sectional and a 5-year panel data, and the development of a System Dynamics model. Cross-section data was primarily collected for the purposes of identifying the extent to which risks affect households, while the 5-year panel data was sourced from the Arid Lands Resource Management Project (ALRMP). Descriptive and empirical analysis showed that droughts, land use system and human population were considered as the main cause of shrinking rangeland productivity and as a result declining per capita livestock. This was further confirmed from the panel data analysis indicating climate variability as the main driver of pastoral wellbeing. Droughts affect rangeland pasture productivity, market prices, livestock assets, and households‘ nutritional status and poverty levels. These results imply a multifaceted nature of pastoral system with compound affects. The SD simulation result, which was run over the period January 2006 to December 2030, provided insights on policy evaluation and the state of pastoral wellbeing. Baseline scenario indicated reducing livestock ownership, causing high malnutrition and poverty rates. Strategies which incorporated rangeland rehabilitation, planned settlements, livestock disease control, insurance against droughts, reducing inter-ethnic conflicts, and timely destocking offered better policy options. These strategies resulted in reduced malnutrition, increased pasture productivity, reduced livestock losses and ultimately reducing poverty rates among the pastoral communities.

In the United Kingdom a large proportion of agricultural land is laid to grass which is used for grazing and also harvested for animal feed. Grass is also potentially the crop most suited to energy production in the UK because of its high yield, low maintenance and suitability for growing under the climatic conditions. Anaerobic digestion is a potential technology for conversion of grass to energy and the current work looks at the design and operation of digester types that could be used to maximise the energy yield per hectare of crop and take advantage of the requirement to store harvested material over the winter period. Initial experiments established the methane potential of ryegrass (Lolium perenne) to be 0.245 m3 kg-1 VS added. This was determined in a series of conventional batch digestion studies at different inoculum to substrate ratios using an anaerobic sludge taken from a municipal wastewater digester. The research then went on to examine potential energy losses through the use of conventional continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) digester design and from this began to focus on plug flow designs that could be simulated through a batch digestion model. Experimental work used a batch feed cycle to simulate a continuous fed plug flow reactor, although the results are equally applicable to a cyclic batch feeding regime. The minimum feed cycle length to gain 70% of the methane potential was found to be six days at an initial substrate loading rate (ISLR) of 10 g VS L-1 and twelve days at an ISLR of 20 g VS L-1; in both cases this was equivalent to an Organic Loading Rate (OLR) of 1.7 g VS L-1 day-1. In a batch or plug flow system it is necessary to add an inoculum, and experiments were designed to show the advantages and disadvantages associated with using the liquid or solid fractions derived from separated digestate material for this purpose. Both proved to be suitable as an inoculum at a 10 g VS L-1 batch loading, but a higher gas yield was achieved from the separated solids inoculum due to the capturing of residual VS by increasing the solids retention time of the system. Results from a number of experiments indicated that in a ryegrass digestion system mechanical stirring could be problematic, and there were indications that this type of mixing might not be necessary for optimal performance. At an ISLR of 20 g VS L-1 some small advantages were found as a result of stirring during acclimation of the inoculum to the feedstock but this could be compensated for by the adoption of once per day liquid recirculation around the digester. This mixing strategy was therefore adopted in subsequent experiments. 30L digesters were used to test a digester operating mode in which solids were allowed to accumulate over a number of feed cycles, achieved by removing only the liquor which passed a 1 mm mesh at the end of each cycle. The solids accumulation rate for ISLR of 10 g VS L-1 loading on a seven-day cycle would allow the digester to operate for 30 weeks if no solids were broken down. In practice the rate of VS destruction measured extended this by between ~24-67% depending on the initial solids make up of the digester. In a subsequent smaller-scale solids accumulation experiment a specific methane yield of 0.415 L CH4 gVS-1 was achieved over 10 feed cycles (weeks) and showed this reached an optimum at an I:S ratio of 3 – 3.5 on a VS basis

The application of rural land-use planning is seen by many in developing countries as a panacea for minimising land-use conflicts and for increasing the productivity of natural resources in African rangelands. However, this assumption has not been thoroughly tested in the context of wildlife corridors in African rangelands. The focus of the research work for this thesis was to evaluate both "conventional" and "participatory" approaches to land-use planning in an African rangeland setting, and to assess the impact of these land-use plans in mitigating conflict and enhancing conservation of important wildlife migratory routes. Nine villages were selected for study in Northeastern Tanzanian rangelands, within the Tarangire-Manyara, Greater Serengeti and MkomaziTsavo ecosystems. Several methods were used to provide an indication of the performance of the plans, against their stated objectives of minimising land-use conflict and conserving wildlife migratory routes. Eight hundred and fifty two households, 13 "expert witnesses" and 4 representatives of planning agencies were interviewed. Several field assessment visits and focus group discussions were also carried out. Review and analysis was conducted on archive data, land-use plans technical reports and general management plans for neighbouring Parks. The results of the research presented in this thesis revealed five major findings: (1) involvement of land-use stakeholders in land use preparation was low; (2) different types of conflicts and encroachments increased after the plans were implemented; (3) Park management failed to involve adjacent villages in the preparation and implementation of Park GMPs; (4) the amount of conflict around villages where plans were in place was comparable to that around villages with no plans, suggesting that the plans made no difference to conflict; (5) overall, both participatory and conventional plans failed to achieve their objectives of mitigating conflicts and enhancing conservation of wildlife corridors and dispersal areas. The major causes of weakness and failure of the plans to achieve their desired objectives were: (l) insufficient participation oflocal communities in the planning process; (2) lack of robust of robust, transparent and accountable implementation strategies for the plans; (3) inadequately qualified rural planners; (4) lack of a comprehensive vision - "holistic approach" - to the planning process. Taking these findings into account, the author has made recommendations for an improved Buffer Zone Land-use Planning framework (BUZLUP) that could contribute to progress in mitigating conflicts and enhancing both conservation and development in Northeastern Tanzania. It is concluded, however, that high quality plans in themselves cannot ensure the successful establishment and maintenance of effective wildlife corridors. In addition to improved planning strategies such as the proposed BUZLUP framework, other broader socio-economic issues need to be addressed, including strengthened conservation education, better protection for rural people's natural resources and support for their livelihoods, equitable benefit sharing from conservation and tourism activities, and more devolution of decision-making powers to the grass-roots level in communities neighbouring conservation areas.

xiii, 161 p. : ill. / This study investigates the motivations, influences, techniques, challenges, and perceived opportunities of 11 food producers who are participating in an evolving localized food system near Eugene, Oregon. These producers are resisting the distanced anonymity and negative externalities of mainstream global food production. Interviews reveal participation in a move towards production and distribution that are not only geographically traceable, economically satisfying and ecologically sustainable but that also emphasize reflexive communication between the producer and consumer. Through initial surveying and in-depth interviews, producers identified that producing food for the local market allows them to pursue a meaningful livelihood, respond appropriately to the local environment, and engage more deeply in community. In short their practices and attitudes closely follow the "Civic Agriculture" model. Particularly their focus on local production for the local market, as opposed to a more distanced quality oriented supply chain audit model. / Committee in charge: Stephen Wooten, Chairperson; Galen Martin, Member; Harper Keeler, Member

xiv, 85 p. : ill. (some col.) / The City of Eugene is advocating for garden projects by expanding their Composting Program to include Urban Agriculture. This research uses 19 in-depth, personal interviews with gardening experts in Eugene to explore the factors that make urban agriculture projects successful and sustainable based on specific areas for capacity building identified by the researcher and City staff. Using qualitative analysis, I found that each identified area for capacity building could be perceived as a barrier to establishing garden space. "Successful" and "sustainable" gardens confront multiple barriers to garden implementation and remain diverse and productive over time. The results of this study provide insight into how and why the City is choosing to remove barriers to people who grow their own food and justification for the need for the City's Urban Agriculture Program. / Committee in charge: Yizhao Yang, Chairperson; Neil Bania, Member; Anne Donahue, Member

Master of Science / Department of Animal Sciences and Industry / Michael Tokach / In 3 experiments, 4,720 pigs were used to determine the effects of: 1) dietary fat and feeding duration on growth performance and fat quality in finishing pigs; or 2) a novel protease or 3) increasing levels of Zn amino acid complex (ZnAA) or ZnO on finishing pig performance. Experiment 1 tested the effects of feeding tallow, soybean oil, or a blend of the two for various feeding durations (d 0 to 42, 42 to 84, or 0 to 84). Overall, pigs fed added fat for the entire 84 d had improved G:F compared to those fed a control diet. Additionally, pigs fed additional fat for the entire study had improved ADG and G:F as well as increased d 84 BW compared to pigs fed additional fat for 42 d. Increasing the feeding duration of soybean oil lowered monounsaturated fatty acids and increased polyunsaturated fatty acid concentrations while these values remained relatively unchanged by the addition of tallow. There were feeding period by fat source interactions for fatty acid composition and iodine value for belly and backfat, but not jowl fat, indicating a longer turnover rate for jowl fat compared to belly or backfat. In Exp. 2, adding a protease to a nutrient deficient diet increased ADFI and tended to increase ADG compared to pigs fed a negative control diet. There were no differences observed in ADG, ADFI, or G:F between pigs fed a positive control diet, formulated to 90% of the pigs SID lysine requirement, and those fed a negative control diet plus the protease, which would suggest the release values attributed to the enzyme were accurate. In Exp. 3, supplementing additional Zn from either ZnAA or ZnO at 25, 50, or 75 ppm in finishing diets for commercial finishing pigs was evaluated. Overall, no differences were observed in ADFI, but a Zn source by level interaction was observed for ADG and G:F, as pigs fed increasing ZnO were observed to have similar performance, while pigs fed added levels of 25 and 50 ppm Zn from ZnAA had decreased performance compared to those fed the highest level of ZnAA.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Plant Pathology / Frank White / The genus Xanthomonas consists of bacterial species causing economically important plant diseases in major crops. In a wide variety of Xanthamonas species, the transcription activator-like (TAL) effectors (proteins) are synthesized and secreted into host cells, whereby they enter the plant nucleus. TAL effectors bind specific host gene promoters, inducing the expression of the targeted genes, which in some cases leads to either resistance or an enhanced state of disease susceptibility. The TAL effectors in individual Xanthomanas species and their targets in host plants have been characterized in relatively few cases. The premier example is the induction of any one member of a clade of sugar transporter genes in rice by TAL effectors of the bacterial blight pathogen X. oryzae pv. oryzae, where induction of the susceptibility (S) genes was shown to be required for the disease process. TAL effector genes are present in a wide variety of Xanthomonas species other than X. oryzae pv. oryzae. My dissertation focuses on the characterization of the TAL effectors in the citrus bacterial canker (CBC) and soybean bacterial pustule pathosystems. In CBC, CsLOB1 was identified as the S gene targeted by multiple major TAL effectors from CBC causal strains. Furthermore, another two members in family of citrus LBD family, although not identified as targets in the field, can serve as S genes in CBC. Initial analysis of bacterial pustule disease of soybean indicates that the TAL effector TAL2 of X. axonopodis pv. glycines is a virulence effector and associated with the expression of two candidate S genes, which encode a member of the ZF-HD transcription factors and a member of aluminum activated malate transporter family. These studies will enhance our understanding of plant-bacterial interactions and evolution of disease susceptibility, and also inform development of durable disease resistant crop varieties.