Interviewed scientists express tolerance of lay views and reference their own lay experience while minimizing the scientific value of lay views as scientists. Authors identify a "superior capacity" model that "seems to serve interviewed scientists rather well; they retain their scientific autonomy without contradicting the assumption of funding agencies and others that laypeople have salient knowledge."
Herrera, Beatriz (author), Gerster-Bentaya, Maria (author), Tzouramani, Irene (author), Knierim, Andrea (author), and University of Hohenheim
Agricultural Economics Research Institute
Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
2019
Published:
Germany: Taylor & Francis
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 7 Document Number: D10258
22 pages., Via online journal., Purpose: This study explores the use of advisory services by farm managers and its linkages with the economic, environmental and social performance of farms.
Design/methodology/approach: Using cluster analysis we determined groups of farms according to their sustainability performance and explored the correlations between contacts with advisory services and a set of farm-level sustainability indicators.
Findings: There exist significant differences in the number of farmers’ contacts with advisory services across countries, type of farms, farmers’ degree of agricultural education, utilized agricultural area, legal type of farm ownership and economic size of the farms. We identified three groups of farms that have different sustainability performance, are different in farm characteristics and relate differently to advisory services. The number of contacts with advisory services is positively related to the adoption of innovations, the number of information sources utilized and the adoption of farm risk management measures. We find no clear linear relationship between advisory services and environmental sustainability.
Theoretical implications: This study derives hypotheses to analyze causalities between indicators of farm-level sustainability and advisory services.
Practical implications: Results suggest the importance of taking into account the heterogeneity of farming systems for the design, targeting and evaluation of advisory services. In addition, results confirm the importance of selection of indicators that can be used in multiple sites.
Originality/value: We used a harmonized indicator of advisory services and a harmonized set of farm-level sustainability indicators in nine different EU countries that could be used to evaluate the role of advisory services in the achievement of multiple objectives in different groups of farms in multiple sites.
35pgs, The idea that citizens' support for environmental policies depends on their economic interest and the community that one lives in, has been debated extensively in the environmental attitudes literature. However, this literature has not differentiated between separate policy dimensions that concern measures that affect specific groups in different ways. This paper differentiates between a nature/agriculture dimension that divides those who prioritize the agrarian interest from those who prioritize the protection of nature and a climate/energy dimension that divides those who prioritize industrial interest from those who prioritize fighting climate change, using a new survey in the Netherlands (N = 11,327). This two-dimensional model meets three criteria: scalability, validity, and utility. Scalability is shown by factor analysis and Mokken scaling. Validity is shown by regression analyses that show that whether one lives in a rural or an urban community predicts one's position on the nature/agriculture dimension and that one's financial security predicts one's position on the climate/energy dimension. The utility is shown by regression analyses where the two dimensions are used to predict voting behavior. The Green Party voters favor nature and climate protection, the Liberal Party voters have the opposite views, the Christian-Democrats favor agricultural interests and the Freedom Party favor industrial interests.
Netherlands: International Program for Agricultural Knowledge Systems (INTERPAKS), Office of International Agriculture, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: D07322
Stewart-Knox, B.J. (author), Markovina, J. (author), Rankin, A. (author), Bunting, B.P. (author), Kuznesof, S. (author), Fischer, A.R.H. (author), Van der Lans, L.A. (author), Poinhos, R. (author), de Almeida, M.D.V. (author), Panzone, L. (author), Gibney, M. (author), and Frewer, L.J. (author)
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
2016
Published:
International
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 137 Document Number: D11461
11 pages., Via UI online subscription, Researchers examined the degree to which factors which determine uptake of personalised nutrition vary between EU countries to better target policies to encourage uptake, and optimise the health benefits of personalised nutrition technology.
