23 pages., via online journal, Cultured meat has yet to reach store shelves but is nonetheless a growing issue for consumers, producers, and government regulators, many of whom have taken to social media to discuss it. Using a conceptual framework of social cognitive theory and issues management, this qualitative content analysis investigated social-media discourse surrounding the topic of cultured meat in the United States by describing the content of the discussion in late 2018 and identifying individual influencers and communities of influencers engaged in the discussion. Data were collected from Twitter using listening platform Sysomos MAP. The thematic analysis revealed eight themes: legality and marketing, sustainability, acceptance, business, animal concerns, science and technology, health concerns, and timeline, and indicated that conflicting views and questions about cultured meat exist among conversation participants. Top influencers included philanthropists, government officials, journalists and writers, and animal-welfare advocates. These influencers were grouped into four distinct communities based on interactions with each other and other users. The topics identified in the analysis provide insight into ways in which communicators can enter these conversations, and influencer communities represent groups of users whose broad reach could more easily transmit pro-agriculture messages.
14 Pages, iZindaba Zokudla (IZ) is a multistakeholder engagement project that aims to create opportunities for urban agriculture in a sustainable food system in Johannesburg. IZ implements the Farmers’ Lab, a social lab used as a transitional mechanism in a larger transition to sustainability. To move the South African urban food system to an ecologically sound, economically productive, and socially equitable system, significant stakeholder integration is needed, and the iZindaba Zokudla Farmers’ Lab provides that. This reflective essay presents a history of the project (2013 until now) detailing the project’s creation of an ecosystem based on social labs that facilitate innovation in the food system. Emergent entrepreneurs and others use the social labs and their activities, as well as stakeholder engagement in their enterprise development, and these Labs have created opportunities for applied and other research in the university. This has brought innovation and change to agroecological practice in Johannesburg. This reflective essay article situates IZ within the broader evolutionary change in South Africa and considers how conversations about food lead to the creation of sustainable food systems.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: Byrnes9; Folder: MSU Ph.D files Document Number: D09117
Notes:
Francis C. Byrnes Collection, Adapted from material developed by George Beal and Joe M. Bohlen, Ph.D files, Michigan State University, East Lansing. 4 pages.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: Byrnes10 Document Number: D09187
Notes:
Francis C. Byrnes Collection, The folder contains Social Action: The Process in Community and Area Development (C10556) by George M. Beal and Daryl J. Hobbs with worksheets and lecture notes based on the article.
11 pages, Sustainability has become a key term for linking environmental, economic and social issues, in both the sciences and politics. Conceptions and frameworks of sustainability have thus arisen to evaluate agricultural systems on their sustainability. Within these conceptions and in political and scientific discourses, what can be understood as the social pillar of sustainability in agriculture varies greatly, especially in regards to the scope and the sustainability standards applied. While rural inhabitants have been subject of various ‘sustainability studies’, the
consideration of the social dimension in agriculture is still rather underrepresented. Our conceptual framework can contribute to enhance the understanding of the social dimension of sustainability by utilizing a social science-based approach to comprehend the complexity of social interaction in agriculture: Based on Parsons' system approach, we capture the components of a social system that encompasses agriculture and its embeddedness in society. This includes all major actors, their interactions and institutions. Further, we develop Maslow's hierarchy of needs as well as the rights approach into a sustainability scale. We call the conceptual framework the sustainable agricultural social system. This general framework can later be adapted to local cultural and social settings, serving as a more comprehensive and flexible sustainability framework.
11pgs, Across the European Union, the receipt of agricultural subsidisation is increasingly being predicated on the delivery of public goods. In the English context, in particular, these changes can be seen in the redirection of money to the new Environmental Land Management scheme. Such shifts reflect the changed expectations that society is placing on agriculture—from something that provides one good (food) to something that supplies many (food, access to green spaces, healthy rural environment, flood resilience, reduced greenhouse gas emissions). Whilst the reasons behind the changes are well documented, understanding how these shifts are being experienced by the managers expected to deliver on these new expectations is less well understood. Bourdieu’s social theory and the good farmer concept are used to attend to this blind spot, and to provide timely insight as the country progresses along its public goods subsidy transition. Evidence from 65 interviews with 40 different interviewees (25 of whom gave a repeat interview) show a general willingness towards the transition to a public goods model of subsidisation. The optimisation and efficiency that has historically characterised the productivist identity is colouring the way managers are approaching the delivery of public goods. Ideas of land sparing and land sharing (and the farming preference for the former over the latter) are used to help understand these new social and attitudinal realities.
