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MAES Associate Director Bokemeier Named Sociology Chairperson

Janet Bokemeier, associate director of the Michigan Agriculture Experiment Station, who has been on special assignment serving as transition leader for the Department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies (CARRS), was named chairperson of the Department of Sociology in January.

Beginning Feb. 1, she also has a 25 percent appointment as program assistant director for the MAES, with special responsibility for the MAES priority area of family and community vitality. This appointment will be reviewed each year. In this role she will continue as co-director of the Family and Communities Together (FACT) Coalition; convene a universitywide advisory committee of chairs, directors, and associate deans for family and community vitality; coordinate MAES strategic planning and program development around family and community vitality; and serve as the administrative adviser of the North Central Region Center for Rural Development.

A noted authority on rural sociology and farm families, Bokemeier has been a professor of sociology at MSU since 1991. She has received numerous awards for her scholarship and service.

Farm Managers Engage in Civic Agriculture to Help Local Communities

Farm managers at a number of on-campus farms and outlying MAES field research stations are working to distribute surplus produce to local community groups, according to a recent research paper by Kimberly Chung, community, agriculture, recreation and resource studies (CARRS) scientist, and Sherill Baldwin, CARRS graduate student.

The MAES field station network encompasses 15 outlying stations and the on-campus farms. Eleven of the farms produce crops that can go directly to consumers without further processing, but three were eliminated from the research project because they had less than 5 acres devoted to these crops. The scientists found that staff members at the remaining eight farms were involved in providing fresh produce to food banks and other groups that then distributed the food to those in need.

"As part of her research for her master's thesis, Sherill became interested in the concept of civic agriculture on the university research farms," Chung said. "Normally, university research farms are not cited as examples of civic agriculture - people think of farmers' markets, community gardens and small specialty producers. But we found that there are some extraordinary people working for the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station involved in civic agriculture."

The scientists found strong connections between the farm managers and local food banks and other groups. These activities were not considered part of the job description, but many of the managers did not want to waste food. They wanted to be sure the food was going to people who needed it and not competing with local farmers.

"They don't get a lot of credit for this," Chung said. "It's something they do because it is personally important to them. They make these activities fit in around the rest of the work they have to do."

All the farm managers emphasized that supporting research is the most important aspect of their jobs. But if they could work with a community group and find an outlet for leftover food and still accomplish the research goals, then the managers were enthusiastic about the win-win situation.

In addition to their paper, Chung and Baldwin have written an MSU Extension bulletin on how these types of partnerships can work successfully for both farm managers and local community groups. In it, the researchers describe the work done by Cliff Zehr, farm manager at the campus plant pathology research farm; Bill Chase, farm manager at the campus horticulture farm; and Ron Goldy, MSU Extension vegetable agent at the Southwest Michigan Research and Extension Center in Benton Harbor, as examples. All three have successful partnerships with local emergency food programs that allow them to provide fresh produce to hungry people.

"The Garden Project has been very helpful, in that it will have people come out and help us harvest for research projects," Chase said. "They know when they get done, the material goes out, gets weighed and is given to the food bank."

The Garden Project is a part of the Greater Lansing Food Bank and distributes the produce to local agencies, including food banks, soup kitchens and low-income housing units.

For a copy of the "Fresh Food Recovery at Michigan Agricultural Experiment Stations" MSU Extension bulletin, contact Chung at kchung@msu.edu.

Two Scientists Receive MAES Appointments

The MAES is pleased to welcome two new scientists to campus.

Lorraine Sordillo was named the first Meadowbrook Endowed Chair in Farm Animal Health and Well Being and professor of large animal clinical sciences Jan. 1. One of the nation's top experts in bovine health, Sordillo's research focuses on innovative ways of treating and controlling mastitis without using antibiotics.

"We're looking at enhancing the natural defenses of mammary glands," she explained.

Sordillo has received several patents for novel methods to treat bovine mastitis, including one using interferon. She is an active member of numerous professional associations and serves as the editor of the "Physiology and Management" section of the Journal of Dairy Science.

Before joining MSU, Sordillo was a veterinary science professor and researcher at Penn State University from 1992 to 2003. From 1988 to 1992, she was a research scientist in the Immunology Group in the Veterinary Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan and from 1986 to 1988 she was a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Animal Science at the University of Tennessee.

Sordillo received her doctorate in immunology from Louisiana State University in 1987 and her master's degree in lactation physiology and bachelor's degree in zoology from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in 1984 and 1981, respectively.

The Meadowbrook Endowed Chair is funded by the Matilda R. Wilson Fund. Wilson served on the MSU Board of Trustees from 1931 through 1937.

Kevin Walker was named assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology and chemistry Jan. 1. His research interests are organic synthesis, mechanistic evaluation of enzyme-catalyzed processes, classical biochemical analyses and use of molecular genetic tools to elucidate natural product pathways. These natural products are typically plant-derived and have current or potential application in nutrition and human health care. His current research is investigating the biosynthesis of the complex diterpene salvinorin A.

Walker was most recently an assistant scientist and laboratory manager in the Institute of Biological Chemistry (IBS) at Washington State University (from 2001 to 2003). From 1997 to 2001, he was an NIH postdoctoral research assistant and laboratory manager, also in the IBC.

During his tenure at the IBC, he received a patent and scripted several continuations-in-part for his work on the isolation and characterization of five cDNA acyltransferase clones involved in taxol biosynthesis.

Walker received both his doctorate in bioorganic chemistry and his bachelor's degree in chemistry from the University of Washington in 1997 and 1988, respectively.

MAES Scientist Heads Animal Health and Homeland Security Project

Michigan State University, the Michigan Department of Agriculture and the state's largest veterinarian organization have come together to form the Michigan Emergency Veterinary Network, or "Vet Net," as part of Michigan's homeland security efforts in the animal health and protection arena. The program will be overseen by an MAES scientist.

Michigan's Vet Net, one of the first programs of its kind in the country, is a comprehensive education and training program geared toward the state's nearly 3,600 licensed veterinarians aimed at improving awareness, preparedness and response to animal disease-related emergencies.

The program will include two main components: a general education series for all veterinarians and an in-depth emergency preparedness training program for those who sign up to serve as volunteers.

This volunteer corps will be a group of private veterinary practitioners from across Michigan trained to identify and handle a wide variety of animal diseases that will help supplement state and federal veterinarian/agency efforts and further ensure the health and safety of the state's livestock and domestic animals.

"Our role in this joint project is to provide the expertise and training for the participating veterinarians," said Daniel Grooms, MAES large animal clinical sciences researcher who is heading up the university's role in the project. "It's important they have this resource to tap into, especially if they are dealing with emerging diseases that they aren't familiar with."

"Practitioners are often the first to see animals with unusual symptoms and are the ones more likely to talk with the farmers or producers or pet owners," said Lonnie King, dean of the MSU College of Veterinary Medicine. "We need to make sure the veterinarians in the field are prepared to deal with emergency disease situations."

"The single case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease, in Washington state helped showcase the tremendous value this program could have in Michigan should such a disease be detected in the state," said Dan Wyant, director of the Michigan Department of Agriculture.

"In addition to complementing the state's existing food and agriculture security efforts, Vet Net gives Michigan a built-in support network that will be critical for rapidly distributing information during an animal health emergency like BSE, as well as having a team of trained frontline responders who could assist in surveillance and response efforts," Wyant added.

"Success in addressing disease outbreaks is markedly enhanced by early disease detection and a swift, appropriate response," said Mary Violante, of the Michigan Veterinary Medical Association. "Success in handling a situation in Michigan will be partially dependent on providing our private veterinary practitioners with adequate knowledge and skills to recognize and respond to a cadre of diseases in multiple animal species."

Vet Net will be implemented in three phases. The first will focus on the development and distribution of a resource binder and emergency contact information for all licensed veterinarians in Michigan. Fact sheets on biosecurity, foreign animal diseases, bioterrorism agents and emerging infectious diseases of concern in Michigan and the United States will be also distributed on a quarterly basis.

When all the fact sheets are distributed, veterinarians in Michigan will have a resource binder with information on all diseases in Category A of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's list of possible bioterrorism agents and all diseases on the U.S. Department of Agriculture High Consequence Livestock Pathogens and Toxins list.

Phase II of the program entails specialized training for Michigan veterinarians. The first training session, to be held this spring, will focus on the incident command system and biosecurity practices. Veterinarians who complete this initial training session will become certified members of the Vet Net corps and will be considered "on call" in case of an animal health emergency in their local or regional communities.

Phase III of Vet Net is ongoing training opportunities for Michigan veterinarians on foreign animal diseases, emerging infectious diseases, bioterrorism agents and emergency response. These training sessions will help the Vet Net corps maintain a high level of preparedness in case of emergency.

Vet Net partners include MDA, the MSU College of Veterinary Medicine, MVMA, the Michigan Department of Community Health, MSU Extension, USDA and private practitioners across the state.

Veterinarians who wish to register for the Vet Net training program can contact MDA's Animal Industry Division at 517-373-1077. For more information about Vet Net, visit www.michigan.gov/emergingdiseases.

Scientists Go Back to School to Understand Ecosystems

A groundbreaking discovery that shows that fisheries ecosystems and educational systems have a lot in common stands to give natural resource managers tools to keep environments healthy.

What seems like an unlikely marriage of social science and aquatic resource management has shaken up the food chain. Applying social science principles changes the traditional view of food webs and their management.

Food webs are a network of interconnecting food chains. Each chain consists of a sequence of organisms eating and being eaten by other organisms. Scientists have found a way to describe food webs in compartment rather than hierarchical contexts.

In a paper published in November in the international science journal Nature, scientists from MSU, the Great Lakes Fishery Commission (GLFC), the University of Maryland and the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory show that food webs are more like high school -- a complex web of relationships and cliques.

Instead of progressively bigger fish making lunch of the little guys, food webs are more about compartments of plants and animals and the strength of their bonds to form groups within the food web. Changes or stresses to one species within the compartment are going to hit its compartment members - think of them as a clique - harder than other species or groups that do not interact as much.

"Bringing in a social science perspective has given us a whole new way to look at the food web," said William Taylor, chairperson of the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife and a paper co-author. "This shows us a whole different picture of how changes reverberate through the system. It gives us new tools to understand how changes affect the system."

The paper, titled "Compartments Revealed in Food-Web Structure," pulls Ken Frank, associate professor in the Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology and Special Education, from the study of social structures of organizations and systems - mostly those of schools - into the domain of ecosystem ecology and management. He teamed with doctoral student Ann Krause, who was working as a graduate student in Fisheries and Wildlife at MSU, and with the GLFC to understand how changes had an impact on the Great Lakes ecosystems.

"There is a common perspective here," said Chris Goddard, GLFC executive secretary. "From the unique combination of social science and environmental science comes a new way to study ecosystem health and a new way to better address the ecosystem response to stress. Now we can break the system down into components."

The research team of Krause, Frank and Taylor from MSU; Robert Ulanowicz from the University of Maryland; and Doran Mason of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, studied five food webs in locations ranging from the Chesapeake Bay to a forest on St. Martin Island in the Caribbean.

"Ken developed a scientifically sound method for identifying cliques in social networks which works well to identify whether compartments existed or not in these five food webs," Krause said. "In addition, we mapped out the food web to provide a tangible picture of these compartments for ecologists."

Taylor and Goddard explained that this method offers natural resource managers a different and more holistic way to evaluate stresses on ecosystems -- invasive species such as sea lampreys, zebra mussels and Asian carp in the Great Lakes, for example. It also holds promise of more targeted and more efficient ways to manage changes in the food web, with more specific ways to address which groups of species are most likely to be strongly affected and which may have minimal impact. Krause is already applying the research to a food web in Lake Michigan.

This research was funded by the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the National Science Foundation.

Spartan Innovator Award Presented to Hancock Turfgrass Research Center

Mark Collins, farm manager of the Hancock Turfgrass Research Center (HTRC), accepted the inaugural 2002 Spartan Innovator Award from Ben Darling, assistant director of the Land Management Office, at the 22nd Annual Farm Managers' Seminar.

This new award recognizes the outstanding efforts, positive contributions and achievements in the field by farm, station and property staff members to meet the changing and growing challenges of regulations, technology, research and funding.

Collins received the award on behalf of all HTRC staff members and students for their outstanding determination, perseverance, ingenuity, innovation and team efforts to ensure smooth development and installation of the new modular turf field for Spartan Stadium.

Using Winter Rye as an Interseeded Companion Crop May Help Organic Soybean Farmers Control Weeds

Organic soybean producers may be able to use winter cereal rye as an interseeded companion crop to control weeds in their crops, according to research led by a Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station (MAES) crop and soil scientist published in the January-February 2004 issue of Agronomy Journal.

Traditionally, organic growers have used only mechanical cultivation to control weeds, but this method has been shown to cause soil erosion and lead to poor soil structure. Conventional soybean growers have used cover crops successfully in conjunction with herbicides to reduce cultivation and control weeds. The scientists hypothesized that an adaptation of this technique could also be useful for organic growers.

"Organic growers needed new techniques that meshed with organic systems and had a more positive effect on soil quality, particularly soil structure," said Kurt Thelen, MAES crop and soil sciences researcher at Michigan State University. "Our research looked at two types of planting systems for organic soybeans to determine if interseeding winter cereal rye in the soybeans could help control weeds."

Thelen, who worked on the project with Dale Mutch, MSU Extension district field crops agent, and Todd Martin, research assistant, found that interseeded winter cereal rye decreased the number of weeds in the soybeans and increased soybean yield in years when soil moisture was not a yield-limiting factor. Two years of the three-year project were drier than the 30-year average, which resulted in decreased soybean yields.

"Our results suggest that some means of terminating the interseeded rye is necessary for effective management across a range of precipitation levels," Thelen said. "In 76-cm-row organic soybean production systems, mechanical cultivation would be an approved practice for terminating rye growth. However, in 19-cm drill-planted systems, new technology that meets the regulatory criteria for organic production is needed to effectively terminate the interseeded rye and alleviate moisture-stress-related concerns."

BSE Update from the USDA

The USDA's investigation into the 81 cattle that came from Canada continues. In total, 23 of the 81 cows that came from Canada have been located:

  • One of the 81 is the cow that tested positive.
  • Three have been located at a facility in Tenino, Wash.
  • Six have been located at a facility in Connell, Wash.
  • One has been located at a dairy in Quincy, Wash.
  • Three were at a facility in Mattawa, Wash.
  • Nine were in the index herd.

The USDA has transported and sampled a total of 39 animals from the Mattawa facility and 131 animals from the index premises. To date, 129 samples from the index herd have completed testing; results were negative. Twenty samples from the Mattawa herd have completed testing; results were negative.

The USDA's investigation into 17 additional cattle, mentioned by Brian Evans, chief veterinary officer for Canada, in the Jan. 6, briefing, continues. These cattle are not part of the original 81 animals. To date, four animals have been traced. Three are located at the Quincy, Wash., facility, and one is at a Boardman, Ore., facility. The state of Oregon has placed the Boardman facility under a hold order to facilitate the investigation. Investigators are still determining whether the remaining 13 animals entered the United States.

Senior U.S. government officials are continuing talks with trading partners and met with officials in Japan, the Philippines, Hong Kong and South Korea to discuss BSE related issues.

Additional information on BSE can be obtained by visiting the USDA Web site at www.usda.gov/BSE. Past BSE updates can be viewed at http://www.aphis.usda.gov/.

As more information becomes available, the MAES will share it through this newsletter.

National Human Dimensions of Family and Farm Forestry Symposium to be Held in March

The Human Dimensions of Family and Farm Forestry Symposium will be held March 29-April 1 at Washington State University in collaboration with IUFRO (International Union of Forest Research Organizations) Research Group 3.08.00: Small Scale Forestry. The symposium objective is to bring together scientists and practitioners from all corners of the world to discuss research problems, results and practical applications related to human dimensions of family, farm, small-scale, non-industrial private and community forestry.

Early bird registration deadline is Feb. 2. Regular registration deadline is March 15. On-line registration and additional information are available at www.familyforestrysymposium.wsu.edu/

Last Updated: January 16, 2007
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