Studies of the “people’s spring,” the period of unprecedented social mobilization in Argentina in the early 1970s, frequently omit rural women even though they were among the sectors that rallied for social justice. In most of Latin America at the time, rural women were prevented from equal participation in social movements; in contrast, rural women in northeastern Argentina actively participated in the Movimiento Agrario Misionero (MAM). This article uses letters and newspaper articles in Amanecer agrario to answer two questions: First, what did womanhood mean for rural women in northeastern Argentina during the early 1970s? Second, what did the “people’s spring” mean for these same women? Although the movement split, with women from small farms generally wanting MAM to expand its efforts to broader societal problems and women from medium farms generally wanting MAM to stay focused on the concerns of Misiones farmers, throughout it all, rural women communicated their hopes, desires, and concerns for themselves, their families, and their communities.

We examined stable isotopes (δ13C, δ15N, and δ34S) of camelid, cavid, and cervid remains from Upanca, an archaeological site located in the Southern Nasca Region on the south coast of Peru. Occupation at the site began in the Middle Archaic (around 3200–3000 BC) and continued through the Nasca period (AD 100–650). Remains predating 2500 BC show low δ13C and δ15N values, whereas remains after this time show increasing and especially more variable isotopic values. We interpret this pattern as marking both a process of agricultural intensification and camelid husbandry diversification. Agricultural intensification began first with C3 plants in fertilized fields, beginning around 2200 cal BC, followed by an increasing use of C4 plants (maize, kiwicha, or both), particularly after 800 cal BC. By the beginning of the first millennium, people were using a diverse range of strategies to raise llamas and alpacas, including feeding them wild or cultivated C3 plants, feeding them cultivated C4 plant foods, mixing C3 and C4 plant foods, foddering some in natural coastal environments, and acquiring still other camelids by hunting wild stocks (guanaco, vicuña). Data also suggest that cavids were consuming at least some C4 products after 1000 cal BC and that the use of C4 plants increased over time.

Piroplasms, which include the agents of cattle fever and human and dog babesiosis, are a diverse group of blood parasites of significant veterinary and medical importance. The invasive Asian longhorned tick, Haemaphysalis longicornis, is a known vector of piroplasms in its native range in East Asia and invasive range in Australasia. In the USA, H. longicornis has been associated with Theileria orientalis Ikeda outbreaks that caused cattle mortality. To survey invasive populations of H. longicornis for a broad range of piroplasms, 667 questing H. longicornis collected in 2021 from 3 sites in New Jersey, USA, were tested with generalist piroplasm primers targeting the 18S small subunit rRNA (395–515 bp, depending on species) and the cytochrome b oxidase loci (1009 bp). Sequences matching Theileria cervi type F (1 adult, 5 nymphs), an unidentified Theileria species (in 1 nymph), an undescribed Babesia sensu stricto (‘true’ Babesia, 2 adults, 2 nymphs), a Babesia sp. Coco (also a ‘true Babesia’, 1 adult, 1 nymph), as well as Babesia microti S837 (1 adult, 4 nymphs) were recovered. Babesia microti S837 is closely related to the human pathogen B. microti US-type. Additionally, a 132 bp sequence matching the cytochrome b locus of deer, Odocoileus virginanus, was obtained from 2 partially engorged H. longicornis. The diverse assemblage of piroplasms now associated with H. longicornis in the USA spans 3 clades in the piroplasm phylogeny and raises concerns of transmission amplification of veterinary pathogens as well as spillover of pathogens from wildlife to humans.

Why, how and when villages emerged across medieval Europe are enduring questions for archaeologists and historians because of the wider social and economic transformations implied—and because many of these settlements persist to the present day. Most archaeological investigations have focused on the nucleated centres of these communities; here, instead, the authors examine the role of agroscapes. Focusing on an agricultural area near the village of Tobillas, changes in soil chemistry are used to document the creation and maintenance of common fields attesting to collective agrarian practice pre-dating the foundation of the medieval village. Reversing the accepted narrative, the authors argue it was these pre-existing agrarian communities who coalesced to constitute villages such as Tobillas.

This article explores the early history of two American peanut companies: Planters and Tom’s. Both food manufacturers developed major commercial brands through the ownership of intellectual property. In this case, the sourcing of different peanut types figured into the marketing of salted peanuts. Through a legal dispute involving Tom’s patented retail bag, I examine how food packaging changed the way that peanuts were advertised, distributed, and consumed in the United States. The argument is made for an historical analysis of food brands that considers how intellectual property domains interacted with one another and with the material properties of food itself.

Climate change is often cited in the ‘collapse’ of complex societies and linked to agricultural resilience or lack thereof. In this article, the authors consider how demand affected agricultural strategies as farmers navigated the transformations of the Late Harappan phase (c. 1900–1700 BC) of the Indus tradition. Through the modelling of monocropping/multicropping, low/high yield crops, and supply-driven versus flexible production, various economic, environmental and social demands are explored with reference to the choices of farmers and how these decisions differed regionally, and how they impacted the wider Late Harappan de-urbanisation process. The authors’ archaeobotanical perspective on the Indus contributes to wider understanding of how urban societies and their agricultural bases change over time.

This article advances historical understandings of health, veterinary medicine and livestock agriculture by examining how, in mid-twentieth-century Britain, the diseases of livestock were made collectively knowable. During this period, the state extended its gaze beyond a few, highly impactful notifiable diseases to a host of other threats to livestock health. The prime mechanism through which this was achieved was the disease survey. Paralleling wider developments in survey practices, it grew from small interwar beginnings into a hugely expensive, wide-ranging state veterinary project that created a new conception of the nation’s livestock as a geographical aggregation of animals in varying states of health. This article traces the disease survey’s entanglements with dairy cows, farming practices, veterinary professional politics and government agendas. It shows that far from a neutral reflection of reality, surveys both represented and perpetuated specific versions of dairy cow health, varieties of farming practice and visions of the veterinary professional role. At first, their findings proved influential, but over time they found it harder to discipline their increasingly complex human, animal and disease subjects, resulting in unconvincing representations of reality that led ultimately to their marginalization.

In modern agriculture, weed problems are predicted to worsen and become more complicated as a result of increasing invasiveness, herbicide resistance, and emphasis on high-input methods. Weeds cause huge economic yield losses that range from US$100 million to US$26 billion globally. The knowledge of weed science has offered success in the past through effective, reasonably priced, and secure technologies; specifically, synthetic herbicides to effectively control weeds in agroecosystems. Weed science is accepted and adopted by many universities with teaching, research, and/or extension programs in agriculture. Globally, approximately 7% of all the universities offering agricultural education have dedicated weed science departments focusing on weed biology, ecology, and management. Some universities also offer weed science degree programs or at least certain courses in their degrees related to associated disciplines, such as plant protection, agronomy, and ecology. Although substantial advances have been made in weed science, such as a separate weed science discipline, specialized journals, and specific weed science societies and conferences worldwide, many constraints (e.g., lack of trained weed scientists) and barriers to adoption of new weed science technologies remain. Slow modernization in weed science research and low funding has slowed the progress of this discipline. New curricula in the weed science discipline should focus on the role of biochemistry, evolutionary biology, molecular biology, and genetics in weed science research.

This study examined absorbed organic residues in pottery to assess differences in subsistence practices in Roman Britain. Through this approach, we investigated foodways at a major urban site and a range of small towns, villas and farmsteads within its hinterland. The study revealed that consumption at Cirencester differed remarkably to consumption at other sites in the surrounding hinterland, with a greater contribution from pigs and/or chickens. Dairy products were a key contributor to the diet at rural sites, including a high-status villa. We contend that both findings are the result of extensification of food production. Thus, we show how reconstructing broad culinary patterns can reveal possible responses of inhabitants to the challenges of feeding the increasing population of Roman Britain.

Across the Pacific, agricultural systems have used two main complementary cultivation regimes: irrigated farming of wet environments and rain-fed cropping of drylands. These strategies have different productive potential and labour needs, which has structured their temporal and spatial distributions. Although these approaches have been studied a great deal at a general level, there has been less work on the local use and significance of these strategies. Here, the authors evaluate ideal distribution models of agricultural activities in the Punalu‘u valley on O‘ahu, Hawai‘i, to assess how habitat suitability changed as a result of infrastructural investment and dynamic environmental, social and demographic change. The results are of relevance for contemporary initiatives to revive Indigenous agricultural systems in Hawai‘i and beyond.

From the seventh century AD, successive Islamic polities were established around the Mediterranean. Historians have linked these caliphates with the so-called ‘Islamic Green Revolution’—the introduction of new crops and agricultural practices that transformed the economies of regions under Muslim rule. Increasingly, archaeological studies have problematised this largely text-based model of agrarian innovation, yet much of this research remains regionally and methodologically siloed. Focusing on the Western Mediterranean, the authors offer a theoretically informed, integrated environmental archaeology approach through which to contextualise the ecological impact of the Arab-Berber conquests. Its future application will allow a fuller evaluation of the scale, range and significance of agricultural innovations during the ‘medieval millennium’.

Animal welfare encompasses all aspects of an animal's life and the interactions between animals. Consequently, welfare must be measured across a variety of factors that consider aspects such as health, behaviour and mental state. Decisions regarding housing and grazing are central to farm management. In this study, two beef cattle systems and their herds were compared from weaning to slaughter across numerous indicators. One herd (‘HH’) were continuously housed, the other (‘HG’) were housed only during winter. Inspections of animals were conducted to assess body condition, cleanliness, diarrhoea, hairlessness, nasal discharge and ocular discharge. Hair and nasal mucus samples were taken for quantification of cortisol and serotonin. Qualitative behaviour assessments (QBA) were also conducted and performance monitored. Physical health indicators were similar between herds with the exception of nasal discharge which was more prevalent in HH (P < 0.001). During winter, QBA yielded differences between herds over PC1 (arousal) (P = 0.032), but not PC2 (mood) (P = 0.139). Through summer, there was a strong difference across both PC1 (P < 0.001) and PC2 (P = 0.002), with HG exhibiting more positive behaviour. A difference was found in hair cortisol levels, with the greatest concentrations observed in HG (P = 0.011), however such a pattern was not seen for nasal mucus cortisol or for serotonin. Overall, providing summer grazing (HG) appeared to afford welfare benefits to the cattle as shown with more positive QBA assessments, but also slightly better health indicators, notwithstanding the higher levels of cortisol in that group.