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Like many other agribusinesses, Pioneer Hi-Bred sought to widen its control over the food and fiber industry after World War II. With the company's expansion in the 1950s and 1960s, Pioneer's interactions with rural people showcased a negotiated exchange of information and service. But even as it grew in size, the company was often confounded not by its competitors but rather its unruly dealers, unhappy farmers, and pesky academics. This paper explores the interaction between Pioneer, local dealers, and rural organizations during this period of economic growth. It investigates the reorganization of the agricultural power structure and how this corn company attempted to circulate their singular vision of agriculture. To do this, Pioneer pursued an overall marketing strategy that sought to infiltrate every layer of the rural community, from the individual farmer to the wider web of academic experts, with the ultimate goal of solidifying their institutional control over the agricultural process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pineapple fiber offers a promising contribution in the developing geo-textile industry in Balete, Aklan. To support this initiative, a study was conducted to assess the different agroecological production systems of Ananas comosus var. Red Spanish for fiber production and determine the biomass production, fiber yield, and fiber recovery of Red Spanish grown under different agroecological production systems. Five study sites were selected with varying socio-cultural management systems which included a) intensive pineapple monoculture; b) traditional pineapple monoculture; c) pineapple-rambutangmelina; d) pineapple-rambutan-banana and e) pineapple-indigenous trees. Results showed that the pineapple planted underneath the indigenous trees significantly (p=0.05) produced lower biomass but higher fiber yield (p=0.05) as compared to the other four production systems studied. It was found out that there was a significant correlation (r=0.93) between leaf weight, length, and fiber yield. However, no significant difference on fiber recovery was observed between study sites. On the other hand, pineapple-indigenous trees agroecological system had higher NPK contents compared to those in the other study sites. Therefore, integrating the pineapple with indigenous trees is the most sustainable production system since this will lead to better soil fertility and provide optimum fiber yield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory of integral, or Fourier-Mukai, transforms between derived categories of sheaves is a well established tool in noncommutative algebraic geometry. General "kernel theorems" represent all reasonable linear functors between categories of perfect complexes (or their "large" version, quasi-coherent complexes) on schemes and stacks over some fixed base as integral kernels in the form of complexes (of the same nature) on the fiber product. However, for many applications in mirror symmetry and geometric representation theory one is interested instead in the bounded derived category of coherent sheaves (or its "large" version, ind-coherent sheaves), which differs from perfect complexes (and quasi-coherent complexes) once the underlying variety is singular. In this paper, we prove general kernel theorems for linear functors between derived categories of coherent sheaves over a base in terms of integral kernels on the fiber product. Namely, we identify coherent kernels with functors taking perfect complexes to coherent complexes (an analogue of the classical Schwartz kernel theorem), and kernels which are coherent relative to the source with functors taking all coherent complexes to coherent complexes. The proofs rely on key aspects of the "functional analysis" of derived categories, namely the distinction between small and large categories and its measurement using t-structures. These are used in particular to correct the failure of integral transforms on ind-coherent complexes to correspond to ind-coherent complexes on a fiber product. The results are applied in a companion paper to the representation theory of the affine Hecke category, identifying affine character sheaves with the spectral geometric Langlands category in genus one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As people have moved away from rural America toward urban areas, they have become deficient in their agricultural knowledge. Fortunately, the land grant universities exist to teach people about agriculture. Yet, identifying the agricultural knowledge and perceptions people bring to the university is important to knowing how to improve their understanding. The purpose of this study was to identify the demographic makeup of incoming freshmen at Oklahoma State University and determine how their previous experiences in agriculture, or lack of, shaped their knowledge of the agricultural, food, and fiber industry. The study found that people who identified as growing up in rural areas outperformed those who did not. In addition, those who had experiences in FFA and 4-H programs outperformed those who did not. Overwhelmingly, the participants agreed that agriculture is fundamental to U.S. national security. Three-fourths of the participants strongly agreed that agriculture plays a key role in society. In all, 40% agreed that they would like to learn more about the agricultural industry, and 61% agreed it was very or extremely important for students at Oklahoma State University to take a general education course about agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]