Prokopy, Linda S. (author), Arbuckle, J.G. (author), Barnes, Andrew P. (author), Haden, V. R. (author), Hogan, Anthony (author), Niles, Meredith T. (author), and Tyndall, John (author)
Format:
Online journal article
Publication Date:
2015
Published:
Springer
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 18 Document Number: D10507
13 pages., via online journal., Climate change has serious implications for the agricultural industry—both in terms of the need to adapt to a changing climate and to modify practices to mitigate for the impacts of climate change. In high-income countries where farming tends to be very intensive and large scale, it is important to understand farmers’ beliefs and concerns about climate change in order to develop appropriate policies and communication strategies. Looking across six study sites—Scotland, Midwestern United States, California, Australia, and two locations in New Zealand—this paper finds that over half of farmers in each location believe that climate change is occurring. However, there is a wide range of beliefs regarding the anthropogenic nature of climate change; only in Australia do a majority of farmers believe that climate change is anthropogenic. In all locations, a majority of farmers believe that climate change is not a threat to local agriculture. The different policy contexts and existing impacts from climate change are discussed as possible reasons for the variation in beliefs. This study compared varying surveys from the different locations and concludes that survey research on farmers and climate change in diverse locations should strive to include common questions to facilitate comparisons.
14 pages., Article #:3FEA9, via online journal., This article reports on a study to determine which information sources organic growers use to inform farming practices by conducting in-depth semi-structured interviews with 23 organic farmers across 17 North Carolina counties. Effective information sources included: networking, agricultural organizations, universities, conferences, Extension, Web resources, personal experience, books, organic buyers/certifiers, and consultants. Results suggest that grower-to-grower networking is a highly effective information-seeking behavior for organic growers. Recommendations for Extension personnel include reshaping educational programing for organic growers to include peer-to-peer information sharing, as well as increased investment to graduate and undergraduate programs that train future Extension agents in organic production approaches.
10 pages., via online journal., The main purpose of this study was to categories and describes the profile characteristics of the women beneficiaries, to determine the use of communication sources by the women beneficiaries, and to explore the relationship between the profile characteristics of the women beneficiaries of RDRS with their use of communication sources. Data were collected using interview schedule from a sample of 112 women beneficiaries selected from the population of 280 by multistage random sampling procedure from five villages of Rajendrapur union under sadar upazila of Rangpur district. Use of communication sources by the RDRS women beneficiaries was determined on three dimensions viz. attitude, contact and application, and finally the use of communication sources index (UCSI) was computed. The UCSI ranged from 45.24 to 277.68 with a possible range of 0 to 300. Based on UCSI, among the 10 communication sources the first five communication sources were husband (277.68), neighbours (219.05), RDRS-worker (205.95), RDRS group meeting (193.45) and relatives (160.42). However, the last five communication sources were RDRS officer (134.82), mobile phone (112.80), television (68.75), inputs dealer (63.99) and SAAOs (45.24). The findings revealed that the highest proportion (38.39%) of the women beneficiaries had medium use of communication sources compared to 33.93% low use and 27.68% high use. Among the ten selected characteristics of the women beneficiaries’ education, farm size, annual income, daily time use, credit received and participation in IGAs showed positive significant relationship while fatalism showed negative significant relationship with their use of communication sources. Age, family size and dependency had no significant relationships. The women beneficiaries of RDRS had moderate exposure with various communication sources so, the concerned Government Organizations and Non-government Organizations engaged in extension activities should make necessary arrangements for improving the use of communication sources by them in income generating activities.
