The Empire at Home

Escherichia coli runoff from sheep and dairy cow grazed pasture: A plot scale simulation

“…For each pair of plots, one was used as a control and the other had a treatment effect applied. For the control grazing, the feces were applied at a similar effective stocking rate (Trafford & Trafford, 2011), with 12 or 14 grazing events per year to simulate a rotational grazing practice. For the cow feces treatment plots, there was no feces applied during the winter months to simulate a situation where the cows were removed from the pasture for the winter.…”

“…The cow feces were collected from a herd of Friesian‐Jersey cross dairy cows. This was calculated to be equivalent to an annual rate of 3.5 cows per hectare or 21 stock units per hectare (Trafford & Trafford, 2011). The fecal material was collected fresh from a local grazed pasture‐based dairy farm and was poured on the pasture surface to create a typical cowpat shape.…”

“…For the sheep experiment on the plots, a control (or typical) grazing event consisted of four individual sheep pats, approximately 90 g each, placed on the plots after trimming the pasture to a height of approximately 8 cm, with hand shears. This was calculated to be equivalent to an annual rate of 18.7 sheep per hectare or 18.7 stock units per hectare (Trafford & Trafford, 2011). The naturally deposited sheep pats were collected fresh from the Invermay composite sheep breeding flock and placed directly on the plots.…”

“…The agronomic approach to accounting for the size difference between different grazing animals is to use a relative stocking unit based on the relative amount of feed (energy) consumed by each species (Trafford & Trafford, 2011). In NZ, a dairy cow will need to eat approximately 6 times the amount of pasture as a sheep.…”

Revocalising human geography: Decolonial language geographies beyond the nation-state

“…In The Empire at Home (2021), a rigorous refutation of any ‘postcolonial cut’ that would supposedly mark a clean transition from a system of imperial-states to nation-states in the late twentieth century, James Trafford exposes the ongoing coloniality structuring and allowing modern Britain to (continue to) exist. He describes the colonial expropriation and exploitation of lands, resources and peoples as relying on the incorporation of nature into property regimes, a process propelled by logics of waste – lands and resources deemed ‘uncultivated’ were/are decried as wasteful, with only the coloniser judged industrious and rational enough to exploit them to their full potential.…”