17 pages, Little is known about how farms and markets are connected. Identifying critical gaps and central hubs in food systems is of importance in addressing a variety of concerns, such as navigating rapid shifts in marketing practices as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic and related food shortages. The constellation of growers and markets can also reinforce opportunities to shift growing and eating policies and practices with attention to addressing racial and income inequities in food system ownership and access. With this research, we compare network methods for measuring centrality and sociospatial orientations in food systems using two of America’s most high-producing agricultural counties. Though the counties are adjacent, we demonstrate that their community food systems have little overlap in contributing farms and markets. Our findings show that the community food system for Yolo County is tightly interwoven with Bay Area restaurants and farmers’ markets. The adjacent county, Sacramento, branded itself as America’s Farm-to-Fork capital in 2012 and possesses network hubs focused more on grocery stores and restaurants. In both counties, the most central actors differ and have been involved with the community food system for decades. Such findings have implications beyond the case studies, and we conclude with considerations for how our methods could be standardized in the national agricultural census.
11 pages., Via online article, A “digital revolution” in agriculture is underway. Advanced technologies like sensors, artificial intelligence, and robotics are increasingly being promoted as a means to increase food production efficiency while minimizing resource use. In the process, agricultural digitalization raises critical social questions about the implications for diverse agricultural labourers and rural spaces as digitalization evolves. In this paper, we use literature and field data to outline some key trends being observed at the nexus of agricultural production, technology, and labour in North America, with a particular focus on the Canadian context. Using the data, we highlight three key tensions observed: rising land costs and automation; the development of a high-skill/low-skilled bifurcated labour market; and issues around the control of digital data. With these tensions in mind, we use a social justice lens to consider the potential implications of digital agricultural technologies for farm labour and rural communities, which directs our attention to racial exploitation in agricultural labour specifically. In exploring these tensions, we argue that policy and research must further examine how to shift the trajectory of digitalization in ways that support food production as well as marginalized agricultural labourers, while pointing to key areas for future research—which is lacking to date. We emphasize that the current enthusiasm for digital agriculture should not blind us to the specific ways that new technologies intensify exploitation and deepen both labour and spatial marginalization.
Fernandez-Cornejo, Jorge (author / Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture), McBride, William D. (author / Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture), and Daberkow, Stan (author / Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture)
Format:
Online article
Publication Date:
2001
Published:
USA
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 128 Document Number: C19121
13 pages., The original website no longer has a copy of the article. Access is available through ERIC database. ERIC Number: EJ890607, Via online source., This article discusses three sites that disrupt accustomed expectations and roles for technical communication. These sites include an agricultural processing site that is requesting tax abatements in exchange for decreased emissions so that it can remain competitive in the global market. The second is also an agricultural manufacturing site that remains globally competitive by increasing efficiencies and expanding the range of products made at the site. Finally, the essay discusses a manufacturing facility that takes finished products-automobiles-and remanufactures them for a niche market of users. Each of these Midwestern sites is globally competitive and challenges expectations for high technology work. Taken together, they gesture toward new definitions of work, in new postindustrial context, and offer insight for defining technical communication in the postindustrial age. The remaining challenge, for scholars and teachers, is to articulate emerging literacy practices supporting postindustrial manufacturing, and to participate in the knowledge management that supports innovation. Here, each site takes something that would have previously been considered either finished product or waste and rearticulates it as an ingredient in a new product. At the least, technical communicators will need to learn to document such organization's innovation and change. At best, such change invites technical communicators, acting as knowledge managers, to articulate opportunities for innovation. Research, a traditional strength of technical writing preparation, allows organizations to better prepare and understand change, turning disruption into opportunity. Postindustrial business practices are no longer the work of futurists, but the reality and structure of the workplace today. Each work site described in this article presents opportunities for basic research into emerging workplaces in need of the expertise of technical and professional writers; each is an example and potential model for knowledge work.
Marchant, Mary A. (author / University of Kentucky), Fang, Cheng (author / Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), and Song, Baohui (author / University of Kentucky)
Format:
Online article
Publication Date:
2002
Published:
China
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 128 Document Number: C19128
11 pages., Via online journal., Visual communication allows the transmission of ideas and information more easily than written communication. Therefore, visual communication is used in different sectors (education, health, machinery, marketing, politics, environmental studies, musicology, science) to overcome language barriers and to effectively convey useful information. Nevertheless, the use of visual material to improve the comprehensibility of safety training in the workplace has been under-investigated, which is particularly true in the agricultural sector, despite its hazardousness and the high number of migrant farmworkers who might benefit from training provided by means of visual communication due to their often scarce knowledge of the local language. Combining graphic composition rules with a user-centred design (UCD) approach, this study aimed to develop visual safety training material based on migrant farmworkers’ needs to increase migrant trainees’ satisfaction in the training process. Focus groups were conducted with both trainers and migrant farmworkers to identify critical issues in existing safety training material and to discuss and evaluate different prototypes of the visual material developed by the authors. Significantly higher satisfaction was reported by migrants trained with the new material compared to a control group in a final training session (U = 152.50, z = −2.165, p = 0.030). Implications for the improvement of safety training for migrant farmworkers are discussed.
8 pages., Via online journal., Agricultural communication to mitigate climate change enables information dissemination of both scientific knowledge (SCK) and indigenous knowledge (IDK) for practical farming. This research analyzed knowledge utilization and conducted community-based participatory communication to propose a practical agricultural communication framework for climate mitigation. Based on a qualitative method of data collection in Phichit province, the key findings showed that SCK and IDK can be mutually utilized to enhance the good relationship among the people and for the people with nature. The participatory communication processes consisted of planning, interventions, and monitoring and empowerment. The successful farmers employing the farming practices of not burning rice straw, rice straw composting, and alternative wetting and drying technique were the main senders. The messages were related to their farming practices focusing on a practical and understandable message and graphic explanations. Vinyl was selected as a communication material for signage in the most noticeable areas in their communities. This research highlights that participatory communication with group dynamics and communication promotion mechanisms at both local and national levels should be enhanced.
Wolf, Marianne McGarry (author / California Polytechnic State University), Gelke, John (author / California Polytechnic State University), Lindo, Michelle (author / California Polytechnic State University), Doub, Philip (author / California Polytechnic State University), and Lohse, Brian (author / California Polytechnic State University)
Format:
Online article
Publication Date:
2002
Published:
USA
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 128 Document Number: C19119
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 34 Document Number: D10673
Notes:
4 pages., via Scientific American website., Opinion piece by Esther Ngumbi, a distinguished postdoctoral researcher at University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign Entomology Department and a Food Security, on why she believes there needs to be a bigger emphasis on public communication by scientists.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 34 Document Number: D10672
Notes:
7 pages., via Scientific American website., Farming across the Midwest will be challenged by a shifting climate and may struggle to keep up crop production.
5pgs, Destruction and devastation litter the Ukrainian countryside. Farms have turned into battlegrounds as Russia's invasion of Ukraine stretches into another month.
