Braverman, Marc T. (author), Gunter, Katherine (author), Galloway, Robin (author), Moore, Karlie J. (author), Hoel, Brandi (author), and Rennekamp, Denise (author)
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
2014-04
Published:
USA
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 140 Document Number: D06063
9 pages., Describes two courses: "Community Education and Practices: the Extension System" and a summer course, "Community Education and Action: Observations of Extension Programs."
22 pages., via online journal., The community engagement professional (CEP) plays a critical role in engaging faculty, staff, and students with communities. In order to do this in the most effective way, this essay advocates
for CEPs to become familiar with the Cooperative Extension system and develop competency for engaging Extension personnel, even when those personnel are not a part of the CEP’s home institution. The essay extends the work of Dostilio et al. (2017) on preliminary competencies for the community engagement professional by identifying additional competencies, organized as knowledge, skill, and dispositions, that can help CEPs work with the Cooperative Extension system to maximize engagement opportunities for faculty, staff, and students. This essay also includes ideas for implementing competency training for CEPs. Conclusions include thoughts on preparing the community engagement professional to learn and collaborate with Cooperative Extension to enrich the academic experience and benefit the communities they serve.
Zeng, Douglas Zhihua (author / World Bank) and Wang, Shuilin (author)
Format:
Research report
Publication Date:
2007
Published:
China: The World Bank
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 124 Document Number: D11231
Notes:
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 4223. 36 pages., Analysis of some strengths, weakenesses, opportunities and challenges of China's knowledge economy in the areas of economic incentives and institutional regimes, human capital, innovation systems, and information infrastructures.
5 pages., September-November issue via online., Digitalisation is improving the agricultural extension system by providing services at the right time, and facilitating adoption of new agronomic practices, resulting in yield improvements and higher incomes for farming households.
11 pages, Online via UI Library electronic subscription, Researchers assessed the impact of a self-sustaining extension system to help stakeholders improve its current implementation. Analysis revealed that implementation of the system has a strong impact in agricultural development through motivation and increased training of farmer promoters.
14 pages, Climate change has severe consequences not at just local, regional but also at a global scale. Since such shifts in the climate, the substantial agriculture sector of Pakistan has been suffering widely from its drastic change. The present study is carried out in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province of Pakistan, to explore the perception of smallholder farmers related to climate change. Data is collected from 400 smallholder farmers of Malakand, Mardan and Swabi districts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. This study expounds the perception of farmers and their farming adaptations to variations in climatic occurrence. Binary logistic regression was employed to discover the aspects that shape smallholder farmer’s adaptation strategies. Our results depicted that the awareness and farm household’s exploits methods for climate change adaptation were common throughout the study area. The main adaptation strategies carried out or executed by the smallholder farmers were irrigation, non-farm activities and early planting schemas. This research identified the barriers to climate change adaptation were lack of money, unavailability of required seed, nonexistence of market access, insecure land tenure system and shortage of information. The findings of the study recommend improving farmer’s awareness and providing timely information about climate change. To improve farmer’s well-being, adequate extension services and greater investment facilities are required to support farmers to sustain their livelihoods in the long run to cope with climate change.
14 pages, This study examines how smallholder coffee farmers’ perceptions may influence their engagement in peer mobilization and collective action. Forty smallholder coffee farmers were interviewed in the Central Highlands region of Peru using a closed-ended instrument. The sample of smallholder farmers was achieved using purposive and snowball sampling methods. Quantitative data on farmers’ attitudes and aspirations regarding working with peers, autonomy, and external support as well as knowledge, skills, and behaviors pertinent to collective actions were collected and analyzed using descriptive and correlational procedures. Key findings indicate farmers perceive a need for external support, feel there are benefits of collective actions, and aspire to work with their peers. Based on the findings, it is recommended that practitioners and farmer group leaders focus training efforts on building smallholders’ knowledge and skills in mobilization, encourage peer association/collective action as a source of external support, and target knowledgeable, skilled and confident farmers to lead collective actions. This study has implications to bolster support for farmer-to-farmer extension and technical assistance systems and inform the identification of leader farmers.
8 pages, Does it matter whether farmers receive advice on pest management strategies from public or from private (pesticide company affiliated) extension services? We use survey data from 733 Swiss fruit growers who are currently contending with an infestation by an invasive pest, the fruit fly Drosophila Suzukii. We find that farmers who are advised by public extension services are more likely (+9–10%) to use preventive measures (e.g. nets) while farmers who are advised by private extension services are more likely (+8–9%) to use synthetic insecticides. These results are robust to the inclusion of various covariates, ways to cluster standard errors, and inverse probability weighting. We also show that our results are unlikely to be driven by omitted variable bias. Our findings have implications for the current debates on both the ongoing privatization of agricultural extension and concerns regarding negative environmental and health externalities of pesticide use.
21 pages, Despite decades of investment in agricultural extension, technology adoption among farmers and agricultural productivity growth in Sub-Saharan Africa remain slow. Among other shortcomings, extension systems often make recommendations that do not account for price risk or spatial heterogeneity in farmers' growing conditions. However, little is known about the effectiveness of extension approaches for nutrient management that consider these issues. We analyze the impact of farmers' access to site-specific nutrient management recommendations and to information on expected returns, provided through a digital decision support tool, for maize production. We implement a randomized controlled trial among smallholders in the maize belt of northern Nigeria. We use three waves of annual panel data to estimate immediate and longer term effects of two different extension treatments: site-specific recommendations with and without complementary information about variability in output prices and expected returns. We find that site-specific nutrient management recommendations improve fertilizer management practices and maize yields but do not necessarily increase fertilizer use. In addition, we find that recommendations that are accompanied by additional information about variability in expected returns induce larger fertilizer investments that persist beyond the first year. However, the magnitudes of these effects are small: we find only incremental increases in investments and net revenues over two treatment years.
7 pages, Present study was carried out in 2018-19, in the three districts of Punjab i.e., Faisalabad, Sargodha and Muzaffargarh to analyse the factors affecting dissemination of agricultural information to farmers through ICT tools. One hundred and twenty respondents were selected randomly from each district, making a total sample of 360 respondents. Concerning the general use of ICT
tools in the dissemination of agricultural information, the findings indicated a change in trend
from the radio (11.1%) towards TV (85.6%) and mobile phone SMS (75.8%). The relevance of information and ICT tools’ cost appeared as common determinant factors for technology transfer effectiveness by ICT tools. Furthermore, farmers also indicated that the most effective
tool to disseminate agricultural information was television, followed by the mobile phone and social media. Moreover, most of the farmers (81.7 % and 73.1%, respectively) indicated that the
lack of innovative information and difficulties in using ICT tools were significant barriers while
communicating via these tools. The use of television and mobile phones in extension should be improved because they were relatively more popular among farmers. It was recommended that the Punjab government should also design a system of periodic monitoring and evaluation of the use of information and communication technologies in the extension with agricultural universities’ participation and relevant non-governmental organizations in Punjab. A dynamic feedback system should be designed, based on the local advisory committees’ recommendations, to determine the local farmers’ needs/problems, which should be sent immediately to the Directorate of Agricultural Information to suggest some suitable solution and disseminate through ICTs.
Brien, John P. (author) and University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Format:
Thesis
Publication Date:
2006-12
Published:
Australia
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 162 Document Number: C26760
Notes:
Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Agricultural Science, Faculty of Natural Resources, Agriculture and Veterinary Science, University of Queensland. 212 pages., Body of research literature contributed by the author during a 50-year academic career. Contains refereed and non-refereed papers, together with major conference presentations, made over several decades, dealing with matters such as communication and extension processes, organization, communication channels and target audience reception.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 163 Document Number: C26957
Notes:
Background paper for the World Development Report 2008 by the World Bank and affiliated organizations. 44 pages., A background paper for "Innovating through science and technology," Chapter 7 of the World Development Report 2008.
Fulton, Amabel (author), Fulton, David (author), Tabart, Tim (author), Ball, Peter (author), Champion, Scott (author), Weatherley, Jane (author), Heinjus, David (author), and Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation, Australian Government, Barton, ACT.
Format:
Report
Publication Date:
2003
Published:
Australia
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: C27005
Notes:
Executive summary posted at www.rirdc.gov.au/reports/HCC/03-032sum.html; full report posted at www.rirdc.gov.au/reports/HCC/03-032.pdf, RIRDC Publication No. 03/032.
Coutts, Jeff (author), Roberts, Kate (author), Frost, Fionnuala (author), Coutts, Amy (author), and Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation, Australian Government, Barton, ACT.
Format:
Report
Publication Date:
2005-07
Published:
Australia
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: C27017
