Lange, Dorothea (1895–1965)

Author(s):  
Lara Kuykendall

Dorothea Lange is best known as a documentary photographer for the United States Department of Agriculture’s Resettlement Administration (later the Farm Security Administration) during the 1930s. Her photographs are often characterized by an empathetic focus on individuals as representatives of larger social conditions. During the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, her work increased awareness of economic and environmental disasters in order to garner public and governmental support for Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal relief agencies. Lange’s most famous photograph, Migrant Mother (1936), depicts a woman and three of her children at a pea picker’s camp in Nipomo, California. Although the family is clearly destitute, dirty, and hungry, the mother’s gaze makes her appear resolute and hopeful, as if she is envisioning her own survival. Lange also documented the Japanese internment camps of the Second World War, created photo essays for Life magazine, and was the first woman photographer to win a Guggenheim Fellowship. She died of oesophageal cancer in 1965.

Author(s):  
Cara A. Finnegan

This chapter examines viewer responses to the Farm Security Administration (FSA) exhibit at the First International Photographic Exposition, held at the Grand Central Palace in New York City from April 18 through 24, 1938. The First International Photographic Exposition featured more than 3,000 photographs representing all genres of photography. As the organizing committee wrote in its introduction to the catalog of exhibits and programs, “Photography today is the most catholic of the applied sciences and the livest of the arts. Lucid in its application, universal in its appeal, it is making America a picture-minded people—a people in whom the visual sense grows increasingly more dominant as an educational and emotional influence.” This chapter first describes 1930s photography and Americans' picture-mindedness before discussing viewer comments on the FSA exhibit. It shows that those comments offer insight into how viewers responded to the immediate reading problem posed by the FSA photographs: how to make sense of images of want at a time of economic, political, and social crisis in the United States.


2014 ◽  
Vol 84 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 244-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. Karp ◽  
Gary Wong ◽  
Marguerite Orsi

Abstract. Introduction: Foods dense in micronutrients are generally more expensive than those with higher energy content. These cost-differentials may put low-income families at risk of diminished micronutrient intake. Objectives: We sought to determine differences in the cost for iron, folate, and choline in foods available for purchase in a low-income community when assessed for energy content and serving size. Methods: Sixty-nine foods listed in the menu plans provided by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for low-income families were considered, in 10 domains. The cost and micronutrient content for-energy and per-serving of these foods were determined for the three micronutrients. Exact Kruskal-Wallis tests were used for comparisons of energy costs; Spearman rho tests for comparisons of micronutrient content. Ninety families were interviewed in a pediatric clinic to assess the impact of food cost on food selection. Results: Significant differences between domains were shown for energy density with both cost-for-energy (p < 0.001) and cost-per-serving (p < 0.05) comparisons. All three micronutrient contents were significantly correlated with cost-for-energy (p < 0.01). Both iron and choline contents were significantly correlated with cost-per-serving (p < 0.05). Of the 90 families, 38 (42 %) worried about food costs; 40 (44 %) had chosen foods of high caloric density in response to that fear, and 29 of 40 families experiencing both worry and making such food selection. Conclusion: Adjustments to USDA meal plans using cost-for-energy analysis showed differentials for both energy and micronutrients. These differentials were reduced using cost-per-serving analysis, but were not eliminated. A substantial proportion of low-income families are vulnerable to micronutrient deficiencies.


2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Péter Mészáros ◽  
David B. Funk

The Unified Grain Moisture Algorithm is capable of improved accuracy and allows the combination of many grain types into a single “unified calibration”. The purposes of this research were to establish processes for determining unifying parameters from the chemical and physical properties of grains. The data used in this research were obtained as part of the United States Department of Agriculture-Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration's Annual Moisture Calibration Study. More than 5,000 grain samples were tested with a Hewlett-Packard 4291A Material/Impedance Analyzer. Temperature tests were done with a Very High Frequency prototype system at Corvinus University of Budapest. Typical chemical and physical parameters for each of the major grain types were obtained from the literature. Data were analyzed by multivariate chemometric methods. One of the most important unifying parameters (Slope) and the temperature correction coefficient were successfully modeled. The Offset and Translation unifying parameters were not modeled successfully, but these parameters can be estimated relatively easily through limited grain tests.


1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. F. Hoelscher ◽  
R. Ducey ◽  
G. D. Smith ◽  
L. W. Strother ◽  
C. Combs

1993 ◽  
Vol 28 (3-5) ◽  
pp. 65-68
Author(s):  
Michelle Miller

The following case study addresses the difficulties and promise of developing a statewide interagency public information campaign to raise general awareness of water quality issues and governmental programs to address them. Due to only moderate success of voluntary programs to curb nonpoint source pollution, agencies are looking toward information and education programs to motivate the public toward conservation behavior. One of the biggest obstacles in developing an effective information/education program is institutional barriers to interagency cooperation, mirroring difficulties local conservationists encounter in their work to restore and maintain water quality at the watershed level. Cooperation between federal agencies, and resource commitment to public information is necessary at the federal level, as well as state and local levels. Agencies involved to date include the United States Department of Agriculture-Soil Conservation Service; Wisconsin State Departments of Natural Resources, and Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection and Administration; University of Wisconsin-Extension; Wisconsin Land Conservation Association.


2011 ◽  
Vol 01 (04) ◽  
pp. 811-822 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard K. Green

In 2007 and 2008, the mortgage market failed. It failed in a number of dimensions: Default rates rose to their highest levels since the great depression, and mortgage liquidity ground to a halt. This failure has produced recriminations: Blame has been laid at the feet of borrowers, brokers, lenders, investment banks, investors and government and quasi-government entities that guaranteed mortgages. These recent events have produced an important debate: Whether the U.S. mortgage market requires a federal guarantee in order to best serve consumers, investors and markets. My view is that such a guarantee is necessary. I will divide my argument into four areas: (1) I will argue that the United States has had a history of providing guarantees, either implicit or explicit, regardless of its professed position on the matter. This phenomenon goes back to the origins of the republic. It is in the best interest of the country to acknowledge the existence of such guarantees, and to price them appropriately before, rather than after, they become necessary. (2) I will argue that in times of economic stress, such as now, the absence of government guarantees would lead to an absence of mortgages. (3) I will argue that a purely "private" market would likely not provide a 30 year fixed rate pre-payable mortgage. I think that this is no longer a particularly controversial statement; what is more controversial is whether such a mortgage is necessary — I will argue that it is. (4) I will argue that in the absence of a federal guarantee, the price and quantity of mortgages will vary across geography. In particular, rural areas will have less access to mortgage credit that urban areas, central cities will have less access than suburbs. Condominiums already are treated less favorably than detached houses, and this difference is likely to get larger in the absence of a guarantee.


2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 461-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ines Prodöhl

AbstractThis article traces the complex and shifting organization of soy's production and consumption from Northeast China to Europe and the United States. It focuses on a set of national and transnational actors with differing interests in the global and national spread of soybeans. The combination of these actors in certain spatiotemporal contexts enabled a fundamental change in soy from an Asian to an American cash crop. At the beginning of the twentieth century, soy rapidly became Northeast China's cash crop, owing to steadily increasing Western demand. However, the versatility of soy – and soy oil in particular – offered a highly successful response to the agricultural and industrial challenges that the United States faced during the Great Depression and the Second World War. By the end of the war, American farmers in the Midwest cultivated more soybeans than their Chinese counterparts.


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