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2. Identification of key components for a new urban food strategy - results of a delphi study in Cologne, Germany
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Hirsch, Darya (author), Heuschkel, Zoe (author), and Terlau, Wiltrud (author)
- Format:
- Paper
- Publication Date:
- 2018
- Published:
- Germany
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 106 Document Number: D10930
- Notes:
- 2018 International European Forum (163rd EAAE Seminar), February 5-9, 2018, Innsbruck, Austria. International European Forum on System Dynamics and Innovation in Food Networks. 5 pages., Urban food systems consist of many stakeholders with different perspectives, different interests and different governance tools. This study aimed at developing potential future scenarios for the food system of Cologne by analysing the system with a Delphi approach. In our research-design, the suitability of the Delphi-method was evaluated not only as a tool for future modelling and scenario design, but also as a communication tool among the group of participants on a multistakeholder platform. As a case study, the Food Policy Council of Cologne, Germany was used. Cologne can be seen as a forerunner among German cities in the development of a new urban food policy. Some of the successful steps to re-envisioning food as an urban system include joining the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, the decision of the City Council to become an edible city and the establishment of a Food Policy Council. For the study it was important to capture participants’ visions of a common goal regarding the governance of the urban food system and also to identify mental ‘silos’. It was obvious that the municipality of Cologne together with the Food Policy Council made great efforts towards participatory processes to build a vision for a sustainable and regional food supply. However, many stakeholder-groups in the process still work exclusively among themselves and do not actively practice the confrontation with the viewpoints of other relevant groups. This supports the maintenance of ‘silos’ and leaves little room for face-to-face discussions. Therefore, the primary aim of this study is to explore key components of food provisioning in the future for Cologne while confronting all stakeholders (municipal administration and politicians, farmers and food activists) with the perspectives of all group members. We used a multi-stakeholder Delphi approach with 19 panellists to find out essential components of the municipal regional food provisioning system in Cologne. Unique in this Delphi study is the bringing together of municipal administration, regional urban farmers and food activists. The research is still on-going, but preliminary results show that more communication among all relevant actors, especially horizontally among different city departments, in the urban food system is needed.
3. Social media hypes about agro-food issues: activism, scandals and conflicts
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Stevens, T.M. (author), Aarts, N. (author), Termeer, C.J.A.M. (author), and Dewulf, A. (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2018
- Published:
- Netherlands
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 137 Document Number: D11475
- Journal Title:
- Food Policy
- Journal Title Details:
- 79: 23-34
- Notes:
- 12 pages., Online via UI electronic subscription, Analysis of five cases of peak social media activity in the Dutch livestock sector. Findings indicated that social media hypes revolved around activism, scandals, and conflicts - each with characteristic patterns of activity, framing, interaction and media interplay. "Our results show the need to adopt a proactive and interactive approach that transcends the view of social media as a mere communication channel to respond in crisis situations."
4. Soil conservation practices and stakeholder’s participation in research projects—empirical evidence from Southern Italy
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Salvia, Rosanna (author), Simone, Rosaria (author), Salvati, Luca (author), and Quaranta, Giovanni (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2018-06-14
- Published:
- MDPI
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 11 Document Number: D10333
- Journal Title:
- Agriculture
- Journal Title Details:
- 8(6) : 85
- Notes:
- 20 pages., Via open source journal., Adoption of soil conservation practices is promoted by increased engagement between researchers and stakeholders. By reporting a case study from southern Italy where farmers have been involved in research projects dealing with soil conservation over several years, we demonstrated that the rate of adoption of conservative technologies is positively linked to the degree of stakeholder participation in the project and that farmers (and other stakeholders) have been driven toward more conscious perception of the complex link between agricultural practices, environmental impacts and socioeconomic effects. The results of this study reinforce the pivotal role of effective participatory processes in soil conservation—evidencing the importance of (i) time required to build relationships and (ii) intensity (and persistence) of collaboration among similar initiatives. Empirical evidence highlights the need to combine different approaches to deal with soil degradation. As well as the participatory time length, the synergies between the methods utilized, and the range of interacting mind sets are also very important.
5. Tracing social capital: how stakeholder group interactions shape agricultural water quality restoration in the Florida Everglades
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Yoder, Landon (author), Chowdhury, Rinku Roy (author), and School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University Graduate School of Geography, Clark University
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2018
- Published:
- Elsevier
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 16 Document Number: D10459
- Journal Title:
- Land Use Policy
- Journal Title Details:
- 77 : 354-361
- Notes:
- 8 pages., Via online journal., Agricultural nonpoint source pollution remains a pressing environmental problem despite decades of policy and environmental initiatives. Cooperative local actions are a crucial element of effective multilevel governance solutions to such problems, but securing farmer participation for water quality protection remains challenging. Social capital—relations of trust, reciprocity, and shared social norms within and between key stakeholder groups—has been found to enable cooperation for environmentally desirable outcomes. However, the downsides of social capital remain under-examined in multilevel governance, where cooperation within one stakeholder group (bonding social capital) may undermine cooperation with other stakeholders (bridging social capital). Given this important gap, researchers need to examine how bonding and bridging social capital may be formed, maintained, or undermined through stakeholder interactions, and the corresponding environmental consequences. In this paper, we address these gaps through a case study of south Florida’s sugar-producing region, whose drainage water flows south into the Florida Everglades. In contrast to persistent water quality impairment elsewhere, Everglades water quality has improved steadily over the past 20 years. These improvements have taken place under a complex set of governance arrangements that established a mandatory long-term numeric water quality target but which relies on shared compliance among farms. These dynamics encouraged interactions among three key groups of stakeholders—farmers, agricultural extension agents, and state regulators—to implement management changes. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, we find that bonding social capital among farmers encourages them to improve their management through a sense of shared responsibility, while also potentially limiting restoration by maintaining perceptions that the regulations are unfair. Bridging social capital helps to legitimize new management efforts, while court-mandated water quality targets incentivize farmers to draw on multiple forms of social capital. We also discuss the relevance of this case for governing agricultural nonpoint source pollution in similar settings elsewhere.
6. Why communication is key to sustainable agricultural water management
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Pandya, A. B. (author)
- Format:
- Online journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2018
- Published:
- Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 18 Document Number: D10509
- Journal Title:
- Irrigation and Drainage
- Journal Title Details:
- 67: 471–473
- Notes:
- 3 pages., via online journal., We often wonder why many a time our policies defy logic and our engineering designs lack a human element. There is no dearth of advances in scientific research and technologies. However, the large‐scale implementation of this knowledge and capacity on the field lags behind several decades in some regions. Unfortunately, the farmers not always benefit from these, least on the large‐scale. Well, the mystery may lie in the underlying communication processes that are supposed to be part of designing policies, institutions, engineering infrastructure, machines, products or any man‐made thing or rule. Or, sometimes it may be just due to a complete lack of any such processes during the design phase. Obviously, agricultural water management (AWM) for food production, particularly in many developing countries, is no exception to this phenomenon.