Abbott, Eric A. (author), Yarbrough, J. Paul (author), and Abbott: Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, Iowa State University; Yarbrough: Department of Communication, Cornell University
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
1992
Published:
USA
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 90 Document Number: C06428
James F. Evans Collection, New communication technologies such as the microcomputer, videotex/teletext systems, the videocassette recorder, and satellite receiving dishes have been available to farmers since the early 1980s. This longitudinal study examines ethical issues associated with the impact that differential patterns of adoption and use of these technologies have had on inequalities among farmers from 1982 to 1989. The results demonstrate a strong adoption and use bias toward larger scale farmers who already have well-developed skills for handling information. This bias is especially strong for microcomputer and videotex/teletex systems and it is increasing over time. Although the same farmers are not adopting all communication innovations, there is a strong tendency toward the already information-rich making the most use of the innovations they adopt. The article concludes with several recommendations that would help minimize some of these information inequalities. (original)
15 pages, Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) are central to sustainability standards and certifcation programmes in the global cocoa chain. Pruning is one of the practices promoted in extension services associated with these sustainability efforts. Yet concerns exist about the low adoption rate of these GAPs by smallholder cocoa farmers in Ghana. A common approach to addressing this challenge is based on creating enabling conditions and offering appropriate incentives. We use the concepts of inscription and afordance to trace the vertically coordinated travel of recommended pruning from research to extension
and farming sites, and to describe how pruning is carried out diferently at each site. Our analysis suggests that enactments of pruning at the extension site reduce the number of options and space for interactions, and this constrains making the practice meaningful to farmers’ repertoires. The conventions guiding and legitimising actions at this site, reinforced by sustainability standards, certifcation schemes and associated inspections and audits, favour standardised recommendations
and consequently narrow room for context-specifc diagnostics and adaptions. Therefore, we reframe the adoption problem as a matter of fitbetween different sites in the ‘agricultural research value chain’ embedded in the operational cocoa chain. Our contribution problematises the dominant framing of low adoption and highlights that the movement of pruning and the sequential enactment at different sites constrain the affordances available for rendering the practice meaningful to farmers’ repertoires. Consequently, addressing the low uptake of GAPs requires institutional work towards conventions that can construct a fit between sites along the agricultural research value chain
2 pages, For years agroecologists have warned that industrial agri-culture became too narrow ecologically, highly dependent on outside inputs, and extremely vulnerable to insect pests, diseases, climate change and now as demonstrated by the COVID19 pandemic prone to a complete shut down by unforeseen crisis.Like never before, COVID19 has revealed how closely linked human, animal and ecological health are. As a power-ful systemic approach, agroecology reveals that the way we practice agriculture can provide opportunities for improv-ing environmental and human health, but if done wrongly, agriculture can cause major risks to health.
The paper explores the relationship between environmental knowledge and farming and fallowing strategies on degraded forest land in the Upper Manya Krobo district of southeastern Ghana. Changes in cropping strategies are related to the expansion and transformation of frontier agrarian settlement, increasing population density, social differentiation, and land hunger. As a consequence land degradation has become a serious problem among the smaller farmers with insufficient land to allow fallow recuperation. Small farmers' awareness and perceptions of the processes of degradation are explored, as are possible innovative contributions to the development of agroforestry research. But labor constraints often prevent the farmer from developing practical systems of fallow management. Local environmental knowledge reveals important insights into the processes of fallow degradation, potentials for fallow management, constraints that farmers face, and some problems that might emerge economic context. The problems that local farmers' knowledge reveal are in this respect as important as questions of its efficacy and potential as a resource.
