International: Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 30 Document Number: D10565
Notes:
4 pages., via website, The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy., As Congress and the public debate the pros and cons of the United States-Mexico-Canada
Agreement (USMCA), or New NAFTA, behind the scenes and in the shadows transnational
corporations are doubling down on their plans to weaken and eliminate public protections
through a related entity, the secretive Regulatory Cooperation Council (RCC). This littleknown council has the mission of promoting trade by “reducing, eliminating or preventing
unnecessary regulatory differences” between Canada and the United States. Since the RCC’s
inception, agribusiness—including factory-farmed livestock producers, the feed industry, and
chemical and pesticide manufacturers and linked transportation businesses—has had a seat at
the regulatory cooperation table. Their focus, without exception, has been advocating the
scaling back and even elimination of important safety protections in both countries. In the U.S.,
recommendations made by the RCC feed directly into regulations enacted (or eliminated) by
the Department of Agriculture, Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection
Agency, among others
16 pages, Promoting healthier diets is strategic to solve the global societal challenge of excessive and unhealthy calorie intake that causes obesity and overweight and is responsible for chronic diseases that burden healthcare systems. The relationship between food and personal health is well established and in recent years it has originated a number of dietary recommendations from the World Health Organisation (WHO) focused on encouraging healthier diets. The environmental impact of food intake and of particular diets is a growing research area. However, neither research
nor public policies, in particular, have been able so far to establish a link between promoting healthier diets and their impact on enhancing environmentally healthier farming systems and the sustainability of rural landscapes. This paper addresses this gap by presenting a multidisciplinary literature review which combines evidence from nutrition and health sciences with that from environmental, agrarian and sustainability studies on the impacts of foods and dietary patterns on the environment, ecosystems and rural landscape. This integrate d review,
complemented with data analysis, highlights the Mediterranean diet as a healthier dietary pattern whose promotion could be beneficial to recover or maintain the sustainability of Mediterranean rural landscape. Hence, the second part of the paper focus on discussing the role of public policies in enabling the link between enhancing healthier diets and healthier farming systems in order to sustain rural landscapes since these play a key role in the sustainability of Mediterranean rural areas.
13 pages., Via online journal., Based on research-to-policy narratives provided by UC Cooperative Extension (UCCE) academics, we argue that current, effective Cooperative Extension (Extension) practices support a broader, more convincing account of Extension's public value than its leaders often articulate. This proposed account incorporates the familiar Extension narrative in which technical expertise and objectivity are emphasized. It also incorporates the insight, derived from our data, that Extension can achieve its greatest relevance in policy circles when it weaves together its ability to provide trustworthy technical knowledge with its capacity to influence policy dialogue, debate and practice across multiple settings and over the long term. In a policy world often marked by short-term thinking and polarization, Extension's ability to foster deliberative, context-sensitive and future-oriented policymaking is a critical contribution to society. Interview data reveals three approaches to effective policy-oriented relationship building: community-government partnership building; stakeholder-oriented experimental research; and community empowerment. Understanding these approaches can help reframe the story that we in the Extension system tell ourselves and the public about the public value we create.
Eanes, Francis R. (author), Singh, Ajay S. (author), Bulla, Brian R. (author), Ranjan, Pranay (author), Fales, Mary (author), Wickerham, Benjamin (author), Doran, Patrick J. (author), and Prokopy, Linda S. (author)
Format:
Online journal article
Publication Date:
2019-02
Published:
Elsevier
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 12 Document Number: D10369
11 pages., Via online journal., Federal agricultural land use policies in the United States aimed at protecting soil health and water quality typically rely on persuading individual farmers to voluntarily adopt conservation practices. An expanding body of literature suggests that private sector intermediaries, such as crop advisers, are increasingly trusted sources of information for farmers about conservation practices and thus may be persuasive actors in the conservation-adoption realm. While previous studies have explored farmers’ perceptions of crop advisers facilitating conservation practice adoption and participating in conservation programs in agricultural landscapes, little research to date has explored crop advisers’ perceptions of this role, and few agricultural land use policies have explicitly included crop advisers as conservation partners. This study fills a critical void in the literature by evaluating the Saginaw Bay Regional Conservation Partnership Program, an innovative agricultural policy that relies on crop advisers to recruit farmers into the program and assist them with the adoption of conservation practices. Through a survey and interviews with crop advisers in the Saginaw Bay watershed in Michigan, USA, we explore crop advisers’ perceptions of their role in the program and of delivering conservation information to farmers. We found that crop advisers have positive attitudes towards land/water resources and conservation practices, believe they have an important intermediary role to play in facilitating conservation practice adoption, and believe their supervisors are supportive of them promoting conservation. However, difficulties in collaboration and communication between the private and governmental sectors – resulting from perceived differences, operational differences, and territoriality – present a key barrier to crop advisers increasing their intermediary role in the promotion and implementation of federal conservation programs. Future research and policy initiatives should explore how to address public-private territoriality and whether crop advisers should be incentivized to deliver information about conservation practices and/or assist in enrolling farmers in federal conservation programs.
International: Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 30 Document Number: D10564
Notes:
2 pages., via website, The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy., Regulation gets a bad name in much of the world today. Business lobbies have successfully equated it in many people’s minds with just so much “red tape”. Government-imposed rules on how things are made, how services are delivered and what products have no place on the market at all are said to hamper business competitiveness. Precautionary measures aimed at safeguarding people’s health, or the health of fragile water bodies and ecosystems, are labelled unfair barriers to trade and investment — a claim made increasingly over the past quarter-century of corporate globalization.
11 pages, In the new public space shaped by short, fast, and networked interactions on social media, single keywords, often used in combination with a hashtag, have become important framing devices that structure conversations and communities. This study provides insight into how keywords become dominant framing devices. We conduct a longitudinal comparative case study on the emergence and evolution of two dominant keywords in the Dutch livestock debate: plofkip (booster-broiler) and megastal (megastable). Based on an analysis of social media messages, news articles, and policy debates and documents, we study the role of keywords in semantic fields, communication strategies, and policy practices. We present four dynamics that help to understand how keywords become 'master terms': (1) loaded keywords for contested politicized objects can become powerful framing devices because they carry normative meaning and yet are open enough to be applied widely; (2) if activists explicitly and consistently relate the meaning of a loaded term to realities and responsibilities in the sector, the term becomes the signifier of an activist frame: (3) counter terms and frames increase attention, broaden the involvement of actors and deepen the conversation to a value-based debate, through which keywords become master terms: (4) master terms shape policy practices, which in turn reinforces the affordance of the terms in the conversation. We propose the concept of 'master term' as a keyword that not only reflects, but activates and establishes a master frame around which conversations and practices revolve. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
32 pages., via online journal., The phrase in the title is not mine. I am borrowing it here from syndicated
columnist and cowboy poet Baxter Black, who borrowed the title of one
of his own columns “Growth of Agricultural Ignorance” from the editor of
the Delmarva Farmer (a weekly agricultural publication serving the Delaware,
Maryland, and Virginia region). In many ways I agree with the term, and
believe it is accurate in part to describe American society in the late twentieth
century and into the twenty-first. Thus, I would like to take this opportunity
to discuss some trends in American agriculture, and for that matter, agricultural history, and some concerns that I have about them. Not all the trends are bad, of course, and perhaps in some ways, at least, American society is less agriculturally ignorant than Black and others suggest.
Arnott, David (author), Chadwick, David R. (author), Wynne-Jones, Sophie (author), and Jones, David L. (author)
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
2019-10-18
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 206 Document Number: D12810
Notes:
8pgs, On the 23rd June 2016, the UK referendum on European Union (EU) membership resulted in a vote to leave the EU. This departure, should it occur, would see the implementation of a new agricultural policy within the UK which will most likely see the removal of direct financial support to farmers. In this study, we use combined agricultural survey and rural payments data to evaluate the extent of reliance upon Pillar 1 payments, based on a sample of 24,492 (i.e. 70%) of farm holdings in Wales. This approach eliminates some of the variation found in the Farm Business Survey through the delivery of a more comprehensive picture on the numbers and types of farm holding potentially facing economic hardship and the quantities of land and livestock associated with those holdings. We estimate ˜34% of our sampled Welsh farm holdings face serious financial difficulties and show ˜44% of agricultural land on sampled farm holdings in Wales being vulnerable to land use change or abandonment. Based on our results, we consider the potential social and ecological impacts that the removal of direct payments may have on land use in Wales. We also discuss the use of a more balanced approach to land management that could support governmental visions to keep farmers on the land, improve productivity and deliver high quality ‘Public Goods’.
