Crider, Margaux S. (author), Vick, K.C. (author), Young, Jeffery A. (author), Breazeale, Nicole D. (author), Jones, Kenneth R. (author), and Zimmerman, Julie N. (author)
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
2025-02-15
Published:
USA: Extension Journal, Inc.
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 210 Document Number: D13542
20 pages, Extension’s evolving role in urban food production will require intensive reflexivity and ongoing collaboration. Extension educators around the country have already made progress in engaging with both the social and horticultural sides of urban agriculture. Designed appropriately, urban food systems hold the potential for healthy food access, community and environmental resilience, and economic prosperity (Rangarajan & Riordan 2019). Moving forward, we offer recommendations for Extension staff to apply within their institutions and beyond. Specifically, we urge Extension to prioritize the following: 1) mediate the rural/urban dichotomy, 2) tackle structural and institutional power dynamics, and 3) intensify strategies for community resilience.
9 pages, As the food industry becomes globally connected, it is essential to provide Food Science students with experience working in virtual teams before they enter the workforce. Working in teams virtually brings extra challenge due to a lack of face-to-face interactions. FSHN 230, Professional Issues in Food Science (asynchronously online), provided students the opportunity to practice virtual teamwork skills. Low, medium, and high dosage team projects allowed for experiential learning and practice in virtual teamwork. Team effectiveness (psychological safety, dependability, structure and clarity, meaning, and impact) was closely monitored using team members’ evaluations of the team at the middle and end of the semester. Students' perceptions of learning were assessed using a survey at the end of the instructional period. Across all teams, students were most likely to report experiencing psychological safety and dependability in their virtual teams and least likely to report experiencing the work as meaningful. Across all teams, students were most likely to perceive the virtual team project as assisting with learning about food science-related careers. As higher education continues to create real-world simulations to teach skills, such as virtual teamwork, more effort may be needed to help students connect classroom activities and career-ready skills to real-world expectations.
Fielke, Simona (author), Taylor, Brucea (author), Coggan, Antheaa (author), Jakku, Emma (author), Davis, Aaron M. (author), Thorburn, Peter J. (author), Webster, Anthony J. (author), and Smart, James C.R. (author)
Format:
Journal Article
Publication Date:
2022-04-01
Published:
Netherlands: Elsevier
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 206 Document Number: D12813
12pgs, We report on qualitative social research conducted with stakeholders in a local agricultural knowledge and advice network associated with a collaborative water quality monitoring project. These farmers, advisors and researchers allude to existing social dynamics, technological developments, and (more general) social evolution which is analysed against a novel analytical framework. This framework considers notions of power, social capital, and trust as related and dynamic, forming the basis of our contribution to knowledge. We then probe the data to understand perceived impacts of the collaborative project and social interaction associated with this research project, which involved cutting edge automated and frequent water quality monitoring that allowed for near real-time access to data visualisation displayed via a bespoke mobile or web ‘app’ (1622WQ). Our findings indicate that a multi-faceted approach to assessing and intervening based on consideration of multiple social dimensions holds promise in terms of creating conditions that allow for individual and group learning to encourage changes in thinking required to result in improved land management practice.
13 pages, Participatory action research involving farmers and researchers is crucial to enhance the adoption of farming innovations and ensure the long term sustainability of agroecosystem restoration. However, the factors for successful participatory research for agroecosystem restoration are not always clear and have been rarely evaluated from the perspective of the subjects from whom change is expected. Despite the increasing call for agroecosystem Living Labs, farmers are still seldom involved in structured and shared co-monitoring and co-evaluation of farming innovations as part of participatory monitoring programs. Therefore, we developed a participatory monitoring and evaluation project to evaluate the impacts of regenerative agriculture between farmers and researchers in the Mediterranean drylands of Spain. Here we present and evaluate the project outcomes by reporting farmers’ monitoring results using a co-developed visual soil assessment (VSA) manual, and by documenting farmers’ evaluation of the VSA and other key aspects of the participatory monitoring and evaluation in the third year since the beginning of the project. Farmers’ VSA results pointed out regenerative agriculture as a promising solution to restore degraded agroecosystems in Mediterranean drylands with insights that are complementary to the scientific monitoring. Farmers’ evaluation of the participatory monitoring process revealed the need to enhance farmers’ support for implementation of VSA tools in initial stages, and to include farmers in the design of VSA tools to adjust them to farmers’ priorities, possibilities and needs. Farmers highlighted the importance of the participatory monitoring and evaluation process to enhance knowledge exchange, learning, and capacity building regarding soil quality management to adapt and adopt regenerative agriculture. Our results confirm that including farmers in the design, decision-making and evaluation of research projects for agroecosystem restoration is imperative to enhance efficient, sound and inclusive transitions towards long term sustainable agroecosystems.