26 pages, This research is intended to initiate understanding of how obesity in the South persists even though the majority of inhabitants subscribe to a faith that discourages unhealthy lifestyles. Grounded in the Cognitive Dissonance Theory, this study examined Protestant evangelical Christians in the South (N = 11), who participated in semi-structured interviews. The first emergent theme was that, to these Southerners, the purpose of food is for sustenance and survival, as well as for bringing people together. Most participants reported having an average level of knowledge of nutrition and health. Furthermore, participants generally agreed that marketing or educational efforts had little effect on their understanding of nutrition. Another theme emerged when participants provided Biblical references to food or health. “The Body is a Temple” and “gluttony” were the most common Biblical concepts. All participants referred to taste or desirability as the driver of their food selections. Furthermore, most participants claimed habitual gluttony as a personal experience in their lives. This study concluded that subjects employed two modes of “trivializing” as a way of resolving dissonance. Some participants justified their eating habits based on Southern culture, while others explained that their church culture supported unhealthy eating as a means of gathering in fellowship.
5 pages., Via online magazine., Winner of the 2017 Borlaug cast communication award, Jayson Lusk, shares the three challenges he sees in effectively communicating with the general public as well as some potential solutions.
12 pages, Knowledge brokers are often portrayed as neutral intermediaries that act as a necessary conduit between the spheres of science and policy. Conceived largely as a task in packaging, brokers are expected to link knowledge producers and users and objectively translate science into policy-useable knowledge. The research presented in this paper shows how brokering can be far more active and precarious. We present findings from semi-structured interviews with practitioners working with community-based groups involved in collaborative water planning in New Zealand’s South Island region of Canterbury. Working in a highly conflicted situation, our brokers had to navigate different knowledges and epistemic practices, highly divergent values and grapple with uncertainties to deliver recommendations for regional authorities to set water quality and quantity limits. Conceiving science and policy as interlinked, mutually constitutive and co-produced at multiple levels, rather than as separate domains, shows how the brokers of this study were not only bridging or blurring science policy boundaries to integrate and translate knowledges. They were also building boundaries between science and policy to foster credibility and legitimacy for themselves as scientists and the knowledge they were brokering. This research identifies further under-explored aspects of brokering expertise, namely, the multiple dimensions of brokering, transdisciplinary skills and expertise, ‘absorptive’ uncertainty management and knowledge translation practices.
Bowen, Blannie E. (author), Lee, Jasper S. (author), Paulette, Dwight M. (author), and Paulette: Graduate Assistant, Department of Agricultural and Extension Education, Mississippi State University; Lee: Professor and Head, Department of Agricultural and Extension Education, Mississippi State University; Bowen: Associate Professor, Department of Agricultural and Extension Education, Mississippi State University
Format:
Conference paper
Publication Date:
1983
Published:
USA
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 48 Document Number: C00031
Notes:
Evans; Mississippi State University; See also C01249 for short abstract, Mimeographed, 1983. 15 p. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of Agricultural Communicators in Education (ACE); 1983 July 17-21; Madison, WI
Bowen, Blannie E. (author), Lee, Jasper S. (author), Paulette, Dwight M. (author), and Paulette: Graduate Assistant, Department of Agricultural and Extension Education, Mississippi State University; Lee: Professor and Head, Department of Agricultural and Extension Education, Mississippi State University; Bowen: Associate Professor, Department of Agricultural and Extension Education, Mississippi State University
Format:
Conference paper
Publication Date:
1983
Published:
USA
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 55 Document Number: C01249
Notes:
451-457; See ID C01241 for original; For complete proposal, see ID C00031, Harold Swanson Collection; See ID CO1241, Mimeographed. 1983. 3 p. Paper presented at the National Convention of Agricultural Communicators in Education; 1983 July 19, Madison, WI
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: D09074
Notes:
James E. Grunig Collection, Pages 72-104 in F.L. Casmir (ed.), International and intercultural communications. Washington: University Press of America. 32 pages.
20 pages, Knowledge of agricultural practices has declined in recent years, resulting in consumers becoming uncertain of where and how their food has been produced and the marketing tactics used to promote the product. Historically, the U.S. population’s rich agricultural heritage coincided with higher levels of agricultural literacy. Some scholars, however, have maintained that U.S. culture has begun to lose touch with its agricultural foundations. More recent evidence has demonstrated that consumers acquire knowledge about their food from various media, most notably the Internet and social media. Often these sources use incorrect information and promote food and agricultural marketing trends that may not be grounded in scientific data. In response, this historical narrative analyzed a reform effort that occurred in U.S. food labeling policy and practice in the 1900s, which contributed to food labeling issues and consumer distrust in the agricultural industry. Based on the findings of this investigation, we concluded that food labels were initially intended to provide consumers with more profound knowledge of the food they purchased. However, key legislative acts such as the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act and the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act shifted the food labeling movement into a branding device to differentiate products and brands. We recommend that agricultural practitioners explore new ways to communicate their message more effectively. We also call for producers to incorporate more personal and emotional appeals when marketing agricultural products to better compete with third-party branding efforts.
"Agricultural education is much older than our agricultural colleges. We might say that agricultural communication is as old as agriculture itself. Scenes of rural life engraved in stone by people of ancient times, the Biblical record - Old Testament stories, the pastoral poetry of the Psalms, the rural parables of the New Testament - and the writings on agriculture by the Greeks and the Romans reflect the evolution of agricultural communications."
