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    2. Automated pastures and the digital divide: How agricultural technologies are shaping labour and rural communities

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    Collection:
    Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
    Contributers:
    Rotz, Sarah (author), Gravely, Evan (author), Mosby, Ian (author), Duncan, Emily (author), Finnis, Elizabeth (author), Horgan, Mervyn (author), LeBlanc, Joseph (author), Martin, Ralph (author), Tait Neufeld, Hannah (author), Nixon, Andrew (author), Pant, Laxmi (author), Shalla, Vivian (author), and Fraser, Evan (author)
    Format:
    Online article
    Publication Date:
    2019-02-13
    Published:
    Canada: Science Direct
    Location:
    Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 7 Document Number: D10251
    Journal Title:
    Journal of Rural Studies
    Notes:
    11 pages., Via online article, A “digital revolution” in agriculture is underway. Advanced technologies like sensors, artificial intelligence, and robotics are increasingly being promoted as a means to increase food production efficiency while minimizing resource use. In the process, agricultural digitalization raises critical social questions about the implications for diverse agricultural labourers and rural spaces as digitalization evolves. In this paper, we use literature and field data to outline some key trends being observed at the nexus of agricultural production, technology, and labour in North America, with a particular focus on the Canadian context. Using the data, we highlight three key tensions observed: rising land costs and automation; the development of a high-skill/low-skilled bifurcated labour market; and issues around the control of digital data. With these tensions in mind, we use a social justice lens to consider the potential implications of digital agricultural technologies for farm labour and rural communities, which directs our attention to racial exploitation in agricultural labour specifically. In exploring these tensions, we argue that policy and research must further examine how to shift the trajectory of digitalization in ways that support food production as well as marginalized agricultural labourers, while pointing to key areas for future research—which is lacking to date. We emphasize that the current enthusiasm for digital agriculture should not blind us to the specific ways that new technologies intensify exploitation and deepen both labour and spatial marginalization.

    4. Globalization amid the cornfields: teaching sustainable practices in the American Midwest

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    Collection:
    Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
    Contributers:
    Salvo, Michael (author)
    Format:
    Online article
    Publication Date:
    2010-05
    Published:
    USA: ERIC
    Location:
    Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 7 Document Number: D10238
    Journal Title:
    The Writing Instructor
    Notes:
    13 pages., The original website no longer has a copy of the article. Access is available through ERIC database. ERIC Number: EJ890607, Via online source., This article discusses three sites that disrupt accustomed expectations and roles for technical communication. These sites include an agricultural processing site that is requesting tax abatements in exchange for decreased emissions so that it can remain competitive in the global market. The second is also an agricultural manufacturing site that remains globally competitive by increasing efficiencies and expanding the range of products made at the site. Finally, the essay discusses a manufacturing facility that takes finished products-automobiles-and remanufactures them for a niche market of users. Each of these Midwestern sites is globally competitive and challenges expectations for high technology work. Taken together, they gesture toward new definitions of work, in new postindustrial context, and offer insight for defining technical communication in the postindustrial age. The remaining challenge, for scholars and teachers, is to articulate emerging literacy practices supporting postindustrial manufacturing, and to participate in the knowledge management that supports innovation. Here, each site takes something that would have previously been considered either finished product or waste and rearticulates it as an ingredient in a new product. At the least, technical communicators will need to learn to document such organization's innovation and change. At best, such change invites technical communicators, acting as knowledge managers, to articulate opportunities for innovation. Research, a traditional strength of technical writing preparation, allows organizations to better prepare and understand change, turning disruption into opportunity. Postindustrial business practices are no longer the work of futurists, but the reality and structure of the workplace today. Each work site described in this article presents opportunities for basic research into emerging workplaces in need of the expertise of technical and professional writers; each is an example and potential model for knowledge work.

    5. Practical agricultural communication: Incorporating scientific and indigenous knowledge for climate mitigation

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    Collection:
    Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
    Contributers:
    Sereenonchai, Sukanya (author) and Arunrat, Noppol (author)
    Format:
    Online article
    Publication Date:
    2018-03-26
    Published:
    Thailand: Science Direct
    Location:
    Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 7 Document Number: D10255
    Journal Title:
    Kasetsart Journal of Social Sciences
    Notes:
    8 pages., Via online journal., Agricultural communication to mitigate climate change enables information dissemination of both scientific knowledge (SCK) and indigenous knowledge (IDK) for practical farming. This research analyzed knowledge utilization and conducted community-based participatory communication to propose a practical agricultural communication framework for climate mitigation. Based on a qualitative method of data collection in Phichit province, the key findings showed that SCK and IDK can be mutually utilized to enhance the good relationship among the people and for the people with nature. The participatory communication processes consisted of planning, interventions, and monitoring and empowerment. The successful farmers employing the farming practices of not burning rice straw, rice straw composting, and alternative wetting and drying technique were the main senders. The messages were related to their farming practices focusing on a practical and understandable message and graphic explanations. Vinyl was selected as a communication material for signage in the most noticeable areas in their communities. This research highlights that participatory communication with group dynamics and communication promotion mechanisms at both local and national levels should be enhanced.