21 pages, Context: Honey bees provide multiple ecosystem services. Comparisons of coupled social-ecological systems (SES) can improve the understanding of the factors affecting honey bees and beekeeping. Objectives: Stressing the need for SES analyses, we explore beekeepers' perceived factors affecting bees and beekeeping, test the hypothesis that honey bee colony losses are associated to agricultural land use intensity, and discuss the role of beekeeping for rural development. Methods: We used as a case study the steep gradient in SES in Ukraine's Chernivtsi region with three strata: (i) traditional villages, (ii) intermediate and (iii) intensive agriculture. In each stratum, we analysed the social system using five open-ended focus groups. Regarding the ecological system, we analysed data about winter loss rate of honey bee colonies, number of colonies per beekeeper, the average amount of supplemental feeding, and proportion of beekeepers treating against Varroa mite. Results: Thirty-three themes were extracted, of which 73% concerned the social system at multiple levels of governance. The number of themes increased from the traditional stratum with higher winter colony losses to the intensive agriculture stratum with lower losses. This does not support the hypothesis that the intensive agriculture per se affect honey bees negatively. Conclusions: Social system factors dominate over ecological factors, and interact across scales. This requires systems analyses of honey bees and beekeeping. We see beekeeping as a social innovation enhancing stakeholders' navigation in social systems, thus supporting rural development in countries in transition like Ukraine.
Online from publication. 16 pages., "History and the growing power of right-wing extremism point to a volatile future for the West during the Biden presidency."
Online from publisher. 4 pages., "Building trust in food begins with empowering farmers through one of the largest and most diverse conservation- and sustainability-focused pulic-private partnerships in our nation's history."
6 pages, Advances in machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) present an opportunity to build better tools and solutions to help address some of the world’s most pressing challenges, and deliver positive social impact in accordance with the priorities outlined in the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The AI for Social Good (AI4SG) movement aims to establish interdisciplinary partnerships centered around AI applications towards SDGs. We provide a set of guidelines for establishing successful long-term collaborations between AI researchers and application-domain experts, relate them to existing AI4SG projects and identify key opportunities for future AI applications targeted towards social good.
3 pages, 11 pages, This paper examines the usefulness of the new social movements (NSMs) paradigm in the changing context of East European post-communist societies and their agricultural systems and rural communities. Starting with statements formulated in Western sociology in the context of Western democratic societies about NSMs as a protest against modernity, the paper analyses the role of such movements in the still modernizing Eastern European reality. The first part of the paper briefly examines some basic elements of the NSMs paradigm in European and American social science. The goal of this section is not only to identify the basic characteristics of NSMs, but also to identify the typical frames used by them. The second part of the paper focuses on the presence of NSMs in the communist era. Drawing on the idea of NSMs as indicators of a "post-materialist shift" as well as of "anti-establishment" and "pro-participatory democracy", the paper examines the frames of democratic opposition in Eastern Europe before 1989. The final part of the paper considers several selected examples from Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic to explore the role of NSMs in the process of shaping new ruralities during the post-communist transformation.
8 pages., Originally published by Yes! magazine and reproduced by High Country News as part of the SoJo Exchange of COVID-19 stories from the Solutions Journalism Network., Some consumers have turned to community agriculture as the pandemic strains the nation's food system.
22 pages, Cambodia’s ruling party cracked down on the press, civil society, and opposition in the lead up to the 2018 national elections. Drawing on interviews with Cambodian journalists who lost their jobs, as well as long-standing research on rural struggles in Cambodia, we argue that the Cambodian state’s crackdown on media is part of an ongoing transformation of authoritarian populism that has reduced the space for rural collective action. The state’s repression and co-optation of media also signals a change in the ruling party’s brand of populist authoritarianism: from simultaneously courting and spreading fear amongst rural voters, to casting rural people aside. The media is a space of both emancipatory and authoritarian potential, and for the journalists who saw themselves as building the post-conflict democratic state, the crackdown signals the loss of a more emancipatory, democratic imaginary. This study contributes to analyses of authoritarianism as practice by drawing attention to the various scales and spaces in which it is produced, enacted, and imagined.
14 pages., via online journal., This article addresses a stated need within the food justice movement scholarship to increase the attention paid to the political socialization of hired farm hands in industrial agriculture. In Canada, tackling the problem of farm worker equity has particular social and political contours related to the Canadian horticultural industry’s reliance on a state-managed migrant agricultural labour program designed to fill the sector’s labour market demands. As Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) produces relations of ‘unfree labour’, engaging migrant farm workers in social movement initiatives can be particularly challenging. Critical educational interventions designed to encourage migrant farm workers’ contribution to contemporary social movements in Canada must therefore confront the socio-cultural obstacles that constrict migrant farm workers’ opportunities to participate as full members of their communities. In this article, I argue that social justice oriented approaches to community-based arts can provide a means for increasing the social movement contributions of farm workers employed through managed labour migration schema such as Canada’s SAWP.
Interational: Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 166 Document Number: D11693
Notes:
2 pages., Online from publisher website., Cites trends in lifestyles of sending as little to the landfill as possible and offers ideas for local new coverage of efforts along that line (including those of local grocery stores and restaurants).
