Agri-food systems are driven by competing paradigms. Industrial farming paradigms seek to maximize profits by maximizing yields. The peasant paradigm is defined by desires for autonomy and sustainability and is represented through agro-ecological farming. This narrative inquiry based study explores the learning processes of back-to-the-landers in Manitoba to understand significant learning experiences, learning outcomes and motivations for moving “back to the land”, as well as how learning is shared as a form of social action. Transformative learning theory was used to understand whether these individuals experienced transformative learning, leading them to farm. The study concluded that research participants did not experience transformative learning if defined as fundamental perspective transformation. However, all participants experienced aspects of transformative learning through a series of “disorienting dilemmas” that motivated behavioral changes. These dilemmas restored values instilled in them as children, and spurred their desires to move back to the land. / October 2015

Sustainable Built Environments Senior Capstone / This capstone project compares traditional agricultural methods to those of aquaponics. Qualitative research is used to study the effectiveness of aquaponic systems and its ability to solve the financial and environmental impacts of current agricultural methods. This study looks at the environmental, financial, and health impacts of agriculture. Three case studies are used to compare an aquaponic system, aquaculture operation, and an organic farm.

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Increasing concern over the adverse environmental impact of intensive agriculture has led to pressure to develop more sustainable, integrated farming systems which have the potential to minimise the loss of nitrogen to the environment whilst maintaining productivity. Alternative systems include pluricompartmental systems, which combine more than one enterprise or species in a formalised design, such as a crop rotation or spatial arrangement e.g. agroforestry. Three approaches to nitrogen budgeting were developed and their ability to quantitatively describe nitrogen cycling in pluricompartmental systems tested. Budgets ranged in complexity from the EIO Budget, which accounted simply for purchases and sales of nitrogen over the farmgate, through the BIO Budget which included estimation of biological nitrogen fixation and attempted to partition losses into leaching and gaseous forms, to the TRIO Budget which also accounted for key soil processes. Unaccounted for N was attributed to leaching, however it is recognised that this is a predictor of leaching potential rather than actual loss. These approaches were tested in a range of systems; a mixed organic farm, a silvopastoral agroforestry system, organically and conventionally managed beef systems and a series of ley/arable rotations containing different proportions of ley. A simple model for predicting nitrogen fixation from yield was also developed and tested. The success of the different approaches was strongly dependent on the precise objective; whilst all the approaches were able to predict N use efficiency in economic terms, the TRIO Budget was likely to give the best estimate of potential N loss by leaching. The TRIO Budget was the only approach which quantified intercompartmental N fluxes, and it is suggested that this parameter may be a useful indicator of sustainability. Intercompartmental fluxes were particularly difficult to quantify in spatially pluricompartmental systems due to the importance of belowground processes in these systems.

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This thesis comprises two complementary parts: an investigation, using interviews and published accounts, of how and why nutrients are recycled in a 'traditional' farming economy; and an ethnoarchaeological analysis of samples from an abandoned farmstead to identify potential traces of recycling. The Uists and Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides were selected for fieldwork because local conditions favoured intensive recycling in the recent past, farmers with experience of such practices are still available for interview, and surviving farmers can identify functional areas on abandoned farmsteads. Interviews and published sources emphasise the importance of recycling in maintaining the fertility of cultivated blacklands and peatlands and in enhancing the fertility, stability and water-retentiveness of cultivated machair. The use of nutrients reflects their intrinsic properties, their availability and the characteristics of different land types. For example, dung is preferentially applied to blackland and staple grain crops, seaweed to machair and fodder crops. Dung and seaweed are complementary in availability: dung from overwintering livestock is subject to the same constraints as arable farming, while seaweed is most abundant in stormy winters, a slack time for farmers. Samples from different functional areas within an abandoned farmstead were analysed for biological, physical and chemical composition. Functional areas can be distinguished using the variables measured. This results from, and allows the tracing of, the recycling of resources within the farmstead, from the barn and kiln to the byre, thence to the midden and finally to the vegetable plot. In conclusion, archaeological implications are briefly explored for the Outer Hebrides. Intensive recycling may have been less necessary and the accumulation of dung less difficult in prehistory, if climate was warmer, soils more fertile, population density lower and society less inegalitarian. Iron age 'midden' sites with deep organic dumps may be evidence that recycling was indeed less intensive.

In Experiment 1, groups of 10 goldfish and of 10 grey mullet were trained to press a lever for food under a fixed, daily, light cycle. The periods during which responses were reinforced were restricted to two, 1-hr periods in every 24 hrs. These periods occurred at the same time each day. Responses were coordinated with the temporal contingencies of the schedule, and this pattern persisted for a number of days when no responses were reinforced. Experiment 2 demonstrated that a fixed light cycle was not essential for the maintenance of temporal discrimination. Experiment 3 followed a similar procedure to that of Experiment 1, except with individual goldfish and with only one, 1-hr feeding period in every 24. Experiment 4 produced evidence that temporal discrimination could develop under continuous illumination in individual goldfish. In Experiment 5, individual goldfish under continuous illumination were exposed to schedules that reinforced lever presses with food during a 1-hr period each day. Training with simultaneous temporal and visual contingencies, where food was available only in the presence of a stimulus light and at the same time each day, did not attenuate control over responding by either contingency. Further, pretraining on the temporal contingency did not prevent the subsequent acquisition of control by a stimulus light that was presented during the feeding hour. Similarly, pretraining on a visual contingency in which food was available at a different time each day did not prevent the subsequent acquisition of control by the temporal contingency (established by fixing the time of food availability). In Experiment 6, pretraining on the visual contingency did attenuate the subsequent acquisition of control by a different visual stimulus, showing that the lack of interference in control observed in Experiment 5 was not simply due to the intertrial interval used. These findings suggest that concurrent temporal and visual contingencies may control behaviour in parallel rather than in a competitive manner.

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