In this era of free trade and globalization, food is traveling greater and greater distances to its consumers. This is causing small farms and small farmers all over the world to protest as their livelihood is being undercut by cheap agricultural commodities from outside their communities. In the Ecuadorian Andes,...
Understanding which factors motivate farmers to adopt certain practices is an important part of helping to solve many agri-environmental issues. This study uses 19 interviews with farmers along Oregon’s Willamette River, a statewide producer survey, and select interviews with organizations and agencies active in the farming community to examine the...
In Oregon, the effects of climate change on agriculture are already being felt. In the Northwest, climate change impacts agricultural pest pressure, especially insects, whose life cycles are tied directly to weather and climate. The goal of this research was to record and analyze Oregon fruit and vegetable farmers’ relationships...
This thesis examines the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on farms in the Willamette Valley. Using semi-structured interviews, this study analyzes the economic and social challenges created by the pandemic and the adaptation strategies farmers employed to build resilience within the food system. This study found that the farmers experienced...
Food insecurity is a widely researched global public health issue, but students in higher education are frequently omitted from the data and are not widely recognized as a population that faces hunger. This thesis explores the college student population in relation to food insecurity and, in particular, their attempt to...
Around the globe, an array of alternative agrifood movements has emerged largely in response to the ecological and socio-economic threat caused by industrialized agricultural processes. From organic agriculture, to Slow Food, Locavore, and the Food Sovereignty movement, people around the world are reasserting their right to healthy and culturally appropriate...
The purpose of this study was to explore American and Chinese college student underlying cultural assumptions, which influence their perceptions and behaviors in various domains of life. The objectives of this study were to: (a) To generate timely knowledge of Chinese and American youth's cultural images, meanings, and frame of...
Indigenous languages worldwide are rapidly disappearing, forced out of use by the spread of dominant Western culture and its languages. On the Warm Springs reservation of Oregon, the Culture and Heritage department, the tribal agency in charge of language preservation, is offering instruction in all three languages of the reservation:...
This study is an ethnographic investigation of residential turnover, organizational memory, and the persistence of Lost Valley, an Oregon ecovillage founded in 1989. Literature on organizational turnover, memory, and persistence is reviewed and integrated with scholarship on intentional communities and ecovillages, generating a theoretical framework for data collection and analysis....
This thesis investigates how beginning, women farmers, within in a women farmers’ network in the Willamette Valley, Oregon are accessing land and farming information. Using ethnographic, community-based research methods, I ask how land access mediates their ability to care for their land and soil. Are these farmers interested in fostering...