Singh, Lakhan (author), Bishnoi, Rajesh (author), Bihari, Bankey (author), Madan, S. (author), Malik, Anil Kumar (author), Shrimali, S. S . (author), Kadam, M. D. (author), and Singh, Raman Jeet (author)
Format:
Online journal article
Publication Date:
2019-02
Published:
India
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 12 Document Number: D10368
7 pages., Via online journal., The effectiveness of an extension system referred to its ability to meet the fanner needs in providing the new technology which suits to their conditions and results in better production. Recently the demand for information on agricultural practices and technology among the farmers is increasing day by day but fulfilment of these demands exclusively by public agricultural extension system is limited. To address this challenge, information communication technology (ICT) has the immense role in supplementing the extension system. Among the ICT tools, mobile phone, because of its affordability, accessibility, minimum skill requirement, widespread network etc., has emerged as important tool for information and knowledge dissemination to the smallholder and marginal farmers. But it is necessary to study how effective they are in achieving the respective objectives.The present investigation was conducted to study the effectiveness of mKRISHI (R) PAWS (Personalised Advisory on Water and Soil) in Dehradun district of Uttarakhand state. An ex-post facto research design was used for this study. Total 136 messages were sent to the respondents. The data was collected from 240 beneficiary farmers of the north-western Himalayan region. The effectiveness of the mKRISHI (R) PAWS in technology advisory and delivery services were measured by developing an effectiveness index for the purpose. Results showed that 93.8% of farmers perceive that quality of information regarding the latest NRM technologies in soil and water conservation was excellent and 83.75% of the farmers felt that the information regarding the latest NRM technologies in soil and water conservation was appropriate to their condition. The study revealed that the extension services delivered by mKRISHI (R) PAWS were found to be highly effective by majority of the farmers. 34.58% fanners perceived that the mKRISHI (R) PAWS was very highly effective as a mean of getting their information needs.
Eanes, Francis R. (author), Singh, Ajay S. (author), Bulla, Brian R. (author), Ranjan, Pranay (author), Fales, Mary (author), Wickerham, Benjamin (author), Doran, Patrick J. (author), and Prokopy, Linda S. (author)
Format:
Online journal article
Publication Date:
2019-02
Published:
Elsevier
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 12 Document Number: D10369
11 pages., Via online journal., Federal agricultural land use policies in the United States aimed at protecting soil health and water quality typically rely on persuading individual farmers to voluntarily adopt conservation practices. An expanding body of literature suggests that private sector intermediaries, such as crop advisers, are increasingly trusted sources of information for farmers about conservation practices and thus may be persuasive actors in the conservation-adoption realm. While previous studies have explored farmers’ perceptions of crop advisers facilitating conservation practice adoption and participating in conservation programs in agricultural landscapes, little research to date has explored crop advisers’ perceptions of this role, and few agricultural land use policies have explicitly included crop advisers as conservation partners. This study fills a critical void in the literature by evaluating the Saginaw Bay Regional Conservation Partnership Program, an innovative agricultural policy that relies on crop advisers to recruit farmers into the program and assist them with the adoption of conservation practices. Through a survey and interviews with crop advisers in the Saginaw Bay watershed in Michigan, USA, we explore crop advisers’ perceptions of their role in the program and of delivering conservation information to farmers. We found that crop advisers have positive attitudes towards land/water resources and conservation practices, believe they have an important intermediary role to play in facilitating conservation practice adoption, and believe their supervisors are supportive of them promoting conservation. However, difficulties in collaboration and communication between the private and governmental sectors – resulting from perceived differences, operational differences, and territoriality – present a key barrier to crop advisers increasing their intermediary role in the promotion and implementation of federal conservation programs. Future research and policy initiatives should explore how to address public-private territoriality and whether crop advisers should be incentivized to deliver information about conservation practices and/or assist in enrolling farmers in federal conservation programs.
Gallardo, Karina R. (author), Grant, Kara (author), Brown, David J. (author), McFerson, James R. (author), Lewis, Karen M. (author), Einhorn, Todd (author), Sazo, Mario Miranda (author), and Washington State University
Michigan State University
Cornell Cooperative Extension
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
2019-02-28
Published:
United States: American Society for Horticultural Science
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 15 Document Number: D10435
12 pages., Via online journal., Advances in precision agriculture technologies provide opportunities to improve the efficiency of agricultural production systems, especially for high-value specialty crops such as fresh apples (Malus domestica). We distributed an online survey to apple growers in Washington, New York, and Michigan to elicit stakeholder perceptions of precision agriculture technologies. Findings from this study demonstrated that growers are willing to adopt precision agriculture technologies when they receive results from applied research projects and are engaged with active extension programs. The availability of customized services and purchasing and rental options may minimize the effects of the economies of size that create barriers to adopting increasing access to technologies. Finally, respondents deemed collaborative efforts between industry and academic institutions crucial for adapting the innovation to better address the needs of growers.
14 pages., via online journal., Issue arenas, as places for societal discussions, have recently been studied as an important aspect of organizational environments. While a fundamental part of any issue arena is the distinction between active and passive actors, empirical analyses have mainly focused on active stakeholders. We approach issue arenas as communication networks in which active stakeholders discuss topics and involve passive stakeholders. Based on network theory, we introduce an automated method for mapping these issue arenas on Twitter. In particular, we combine manual coding of active stakeholders, and automated semantic network analysis of addressed, passive stakeholders and their topics of discussion. Empirically, we focus on the issue of bird flu affecting poultry farming in the Netherlands from 2015 to 2017 with a sample of 704 Twitter messages. Instead of pre-defining a set of stakeholders for the analysis, our approach to study communication networks in online settings allows for mapping issue arenas based on the stakeholders that communicate about the topic.
9 pages., via online journal., A large body of research documents cross-cultural differences in manual and non-manual pointing. These findings have often been explained as being due to pragmatic, linguistic, cultural, and bodily constraints. The current study narrowed the plausible range of candidates for explaining the pointing preferences, focusing specifically on manual availability. We examined pointing preferences by administering a referential communication task in two types of communities which share a national identity, geographic environment, ethnicity, cultural background, and language and yet vary in their degree of hand availability: farming and herding communities in southwestern China. Our findings show that farmers, who emphasize the use of manual labour in intensive subsistence farming, were more likely to use non-manual pointing in the task than herders, who demonstrate a higher degree of manual availability in the rearing of animals. This research has implications for how the availability of the hands in economic activities may have lasting consequences on cultural pointing practices.
20 pages., via online journal., During the last 10 years, different initiatives have been implemented to provide mobile-based extension services for the agricultural sector in Egypt. The current study compared the quality of agricultural extension messages between public and private providers. A simple random sample of 120 farmers was selected representing 7% of the total farmers registered in the databases of Ministry of Agriculture (public services) and Shoura company (private services). Farmers assessed a sample of 10 messages delivered by both providers in terms of six indicators namely (1) access, (2) utilization, (3) timeliness, (4) trust, (5) satisfaction, and (6) sharing information with other farmers. The findings revealed the lack of access to messages by the farmers in the two services. However, more than 50% had utilized the majority of messages (in case of access). The study also showed significant differences between perception of farmers to quality attributes in public and private services (Access 6.77, 0.01; Utilization 8.44, 0.004; Timeliness 8.55, 0.002; Satisfaction 8.88, 0.001; information sharing 7.62, 0.009) except for trust (1.11, 0.4). Findings provide practical implications to support mobile-based extension services to enable sharing information and link farmers with other actors in the agricultural value chain.
Abstract via online journal. 2 pages., Technological innovation is vital to economic growth and food security in sub-Saharan Africa where agricultural productivity has been stagnant for a long time. Extension services and learning from peer farmers are two common approaches to facilitate the diffusion of new technologies, but little is known about their relative effectiveness. Selection bias, whereby well-motivated training participants would perform better even without extension services, as well as knowledge spillovers, where non-participants can indirectly benefit from extension services, are among the major threats to causal inference. Using a unique sequential randomized experiment on agricultural training, this study attempts to meet the dual objectives of executing rigorous impact evaluation of extension services and subsequent spillovers on rice production in Cote d’Ivoire. Specifically, to reduce selection bias, we randomly assigned eligibility for training participation; and to satisfy the stable unit treatment value assumption, control-group farmers were initially restricted from exchanging information with treated-group farmers who had received rice management training. Once some positive impacts were confirmed, information exchange between the treated and control farmers was encouraged. We found that the initial performance gaps created by the randomized assignment disappeared over time, due presumably to social learning from peer farmers. A detailed analysis concerning the information network and peer effects provided suggestive evidence that there were information and technology spillovers from treated to control farmers after removing the information exchange restriction. Overall, our study demonstrates that information dissemination by farmers can be as effective in improving practices as the initial training provided by extension services.
USA: The Center for Good Integrity. Gladstone, Missouri.
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 30 Document Number: D10561
Notes:
3 pages., Online from the Center for Food Integrity, Gladstone, Missouri., Features research results indicating that public conversation about the environment is growing and so is the scrutiny applied to consumption of natural resources. Information source urges producers to engage more actively.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 30 Document Number: D10562
Notes:
3 pages., via blog from Janzen Ag Law - online via AgriMarketing Weekly., Since big data arrived in agriculture a few years ago, I have watched companies struggle with how to address farmers' concerns with ag data privacy, security, and control. Some companies have started with a clean sheet of paper and drafted agreements that reflect what they actually do. Others have taken a short cut by cutting and pasting agreements from other industries. The result is that contracts for ag data collection, use and sharing are inconsistent and often miss the point-to communicate the company's intentions with users.
Ben-Othmen, Marie Asma (author) and Ostapchuk, Mariia (author)
Format:
Paper
Publication Date:
2019-05
Published:
France
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 32 Document Number: D10583
Notes:
16 pages., Paper presented at the 172nd European Association of Agricultural Economists Seminar,"Agricultural policy for the environment or environmental policy for agriculture?" Brussels, Belgium, May 28-29, 2019., via database., Results of this study indicate that environmental consideration is not the key factor behind farmers' preference involving land restoration programs. The financial component remains the main incentive.
