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Agriculture Business

Book cover detal of a woman next to a giant egg with chickens around
Spring 2024

Smashing success

The Egg and I tells the story of life on a chicken farm near Chimacum in the early days of Betty MacDonald’s first marriage. She was a city girl, a fish out of water, trying to make the best of her new reality and responsibilities on the rural and rugged Olympic Peninsula in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

In 1945, she writes: “Then I gathered the eggs. Gathering eggs would be like one continual Easter morning if the hens would just be obliging and get off the nests. Cooperation, however, is not a chickenly characteristic and so at egg-gathering time every nest was … » More …

Fall 2023

Oats then and now: Q&A with an expert

Louisa R. (Winkler) Brouwer (’17 PhD Crop Sci.) was one of three researchers at Washington State University who collaborated on “The History of Oats in Western Washington and the Evolution of Regionality in Agriculture.”

The 2016 study—written by Brouwer along with crop scientists Stephen S. Jones, director of the WSU Breadlab, and Kevin M. Murphy (’04 MS, ’07 PhD Crop Sci.)—appeared in the Journal of Rural Studies.

It was a precursor to her dissertation: “Building the Genetic, Agronomic and Economic Foundations for Expansion of Oat Cultivation in Western Washington.”

Recently, she discussed her work and oats with Washington State Magazine.

 

» More …

Detail of canoe made of mushroom
Winter 2022

A boatload of ideas for fungi

Fungi and mycelium provide a flexible, earth-friendly material for all kinds of products.

Washington State University student Katy Ayers built a world record-setting canoe out of mycelium, her MyConoe. That’s just the beginning of her ideas about materials made from fungus. Larry Clark, editor of Washington State Magazine, talked with Ayers about products made from fungi and mycelium, along with potential fungi items such as fishing bobbers and hunting blinds.

 

Listen to the podcast:

Transcript

 

Find more podcast episodes, and ways to subscribe and listen.

Read more in “It’s fungi to the rescue” (Winter 2022)

 

» More …

Illustration of elves dancing around Christmas tree
Winter 2022

Talkin’ around the Christmas tree

The Pacific Northwest—particularly western Washington and Oregon—has historically been a major Christmas tree production region. Today, it produces about a third of the Christmas trees sold each year in America.

In general, there are two types of growers: large-scale farms producing trees for the wholesale market and smaller, often family-run operations for the choose-and-cut market.

 

Christmas trees around the United States:

The top Christmas tree-producing states are: Oregon, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Washington.
The average growing time is seven years, but it can take as few as four and as many as 15 to reach the typical height of 6 … » More …

Greg Stewart
Winter 2022

Fair man: Meet Greg Stewart

A friend sent him the quote “probably five years ago,” and it really resonated.

It summed up his feelings for agricultural fairs, declaring they “bring us together, and thereby make us better acquainted, and better friends than we otherwise would be. … the chief use of agricultural fairs is to aid in improving the great calling of agriculture … to make mutual exchange of agricultural discovery, information and knowledge; so that, at the end, all may know everything which may have been known to but one…”

It’s an excerpt from a longer text, and if you talk with Greg Stewart (‘71 Ag.) long enough—and he … » More …

bioplastic knives, forks, and spoons
Winter 2021

Plant plastics

Why make plastic from petroleum and fossil fuels when they can be made from plants and bio-based materials?

Plastic waste remains a huge problem, one that WSU researchers are working on, but other research across the country looks at alternatives to fossil fuel-based plastics.

WSU collaborates with Iowa State University on the Center for Bioplastics and Biocomposites (CB2) on developing high-value biobased products from agricultural and forestry feedstocks. The WSU Composite Materials and Engineering Center provides expertise in renewable resources to develop those novel bio-based polymers, chemicals, and composites.

The work at WSU has been underway for a … » More …