17 pages, We examined the effect of multidimensional farmers' beliefs on the likelihood of cultivating planting materials of biofortified orange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP) varieties. Using a panel dataset and combining difference-in-differences regression with propensity score matching, results showed positive effects of beliefs related to health benefits, yielding ability, sweetness, disease-resistance, storability, early maturity, colour, and that children enjoy eating OFSP roots, on cultivation of OFSP varieties. The proportion of OFSP roots out of total sweet potato production for a household increased among farmers' who held these beliefs. Efforts to promote biofortified crops can, therefore, benefit from taking farmers' multidimensional beliefs into consideration.
10 pages, This study sought to understand Extension Education's trends and research needs as perceived by members of the American Association for Agricultural Education (AAAE) and Joint Council of Extension Professionals (JCEP) by comparing and contrasting findings from questionnaires using open-ended questions. Both groups identified changing technology and new audiences as key trends requiring Extension to adapt, and JCEP respondents noted makers and entrepreneurs as prominent new audiences. For Extension Education research needs, both groups prioritized research to heighten professional development among Extension professionals. JCEP respondents desire Agricultural and Extension Education (AEE) Departments to lead research in Extension administrative leadership. On the contrary, AAAE respondents prioritized Extension program evaluation research. Regarding Extension professional development, JCEP respondents identified program planning and evaluation, but AAAE respondents named research methods as prioritized needs. JCEP respondents prioritized practical experiences in Extension Education college courses, and AAAE members reported some internships, practicums, and experiential learning in their AEE curriculum. The results have implications for AEE Departments in planning professional development for Extension professionals and college instruction producing Extension-career-ready graduates. Recommendations emphasize the need to coordinate college curriculum and professional development and to prepare students for Extension careers.
15 pages, Trust is often an assumed outcome of participation in Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) as they directly connect producers with consumers. It is based on this potential for trust “between producers and consumers” that AFNs have emerged as a significant field of food studies analysis as it also suggests a capacity for AFNs to foster associated embedded qualities, like ‘morality’, ‘social justice’, ‘ecology’ and ‘equity’. These positive benefits of AFNs, however, cannot be taken for granted as trust is not necessarily an outcome of AFN participation. Using Chinese case studies of AFNs, which are characterised by a distinct form of trust pressure—consumers who are particularly cynical about small scale farmers, food safety and the organic credentials of producers—this paper highlights how the dynamics of trust are in constant flux between producers and consumers. I suggest that it is the careful construction of the aesthetic and multi-sensory qualities of food, which is often celebrated via social media, that human centred relations in Chinese AFNs are mediated. This leads to two key conclusions: first, that the key variable for establishing trust is satisfying the consumer’s desire for safe (i.e. "fresh") food; and second, the materiality of the food and the perception of foods materiality (especially through social media), must both be actively constructed by the farmer to fit the consumer’s ideal of freshness.
17 pages, A significant effect of industrial capitalism on the modern Western world is the generation and perpetuation of a physical and discursive distancing between people and food – a result of what Marx termed the metabolic rift. Studies of alienated relationships often homogenize the rift experience. This paper explores how rural Ontario dairy farmers experience what John Bellamy Foster calls ‘metabolism’ and their perceptions of the alienated states of non-farmers. Results from on-farm semi-structured interviews suggest these farmers are aware of a distancing between non-farmers and food (milk) that is a different experience than that of farmers. Such perception of milk alienation involving an external group – or what I term third-party alienation – is accompanied by farmer-initiated interventions, such as on-farm educational visits and educational programmes, attempting to mend non-farmers rift experience. Third-party alienation exemplifies the ways in which metabolism can be diversely embodied – and possibly mended – within current human–food, and human–nature, relationships.
13pgs, This study aims to analyze the influence of neighborhood effects (NE) on tea farmers' intention to convert from traditional to organic farming in the mountainous areas of northern Vietnam. It differs from previous studies in two aspects. First, we combine the theory of planned behavior and the theory of herd behavior to explain farmers' intention to convert from traditional to organic farming, focusing on the impact of the NE. Secondly, to measure NE, we use a combination of questionnaires and methods of measuring herd behavior by McCartney and Shah. Using the generalized structural equation modeling and data collected from 263 tea farmers in Thai Nguyen, we found that NE has a positive and direct significant effect on farmers' intention to convert to organic tea production in the case where neighbors both live nearby and have a close relationship with the subject. In addition, it indirectly impacts farmers' conversion intention through attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavior control. To encourage tea farmers to convert to organic farming, policymakers and extension workers should take advantage of the NE to increase farmers' confidence about the benefits and the possibility of successful organic farming.
