14 pages., via online journal., While dealing with weather variability has always been a source of stress for farmers, a generally warmer, wetter climate with the potential for increasingly intensive precipitation poses a threat to long-term farm viability. Knowing how farmers think about increasingly variable weather patterns (IVWP) is important for educators, agency staff, and others to learn how to work with producers on adaptation strategies to protect natural resources and prevent crop failure. In 2011, the University of Maine Cooperative Extension conducted focus group sessions with farmers from seven different commodity groups, five mixed farmer sessions, and two sessions with consultants, educators, and agency staff who work with growers to learn about grower perceptions of environmental changes, and to learn about changes they may be making to their farming operations to protect their operations from IVWP. Farmers discussed over 40 practices that could be construed as adaptation measures to buffer against IVWP. Fruit (apple and blueberry) growers spent the most time on the subject and expressed the most concern about the effects of IVWP, while dairy and potato growers spent the least. Given the divergence of opinion on the subject of climate change that Maine growers expressed, successful outreach education through the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Cooperative Extension should likely emphasize short-term risk management, resilience, and stability of farm operations as opposed to communicating the need to adopt strategies based on climate change.
9 pages., Via online journal., This paper looks at how knowledge has been communicated within a multi-layered water governance structure in order to manage non-point source (NPS) pollution in South Korea. Since 28,300 ha of wetlands were reclaimed in Saemangeum, on the western side of the country, in 2006, the artificial lake created has suffered from chronic pollution. For the purposes of integrated water management, a water governance structure was formed linking organisations ranging from local to national scales. Despite institutional efforts to implement integrated water management and a governance approach, knowledge of NPS pollution and its management was produced and communicated among certain stakeholders only, such as policy and technical experts. In-depth interview and archival analysis of this research attempt to explain why and how the loss of knowledge communication occurred in this context. The first result of this research illustrates that, while knowledge communication has been smooth at the national and provincial layers, it has not taken place efficiently through to the local layer. When it comes to local farmers and governmental organisations and experts in particular, knowledge nodes have not functioned. Second, the research suggests that non-communication of knowledge has been mobilised as a professional strategy. Actors at the local layer have prioritized their professional interests and intentionally avoided knowledge communication with other department or ministries. Local and community actors have chosen not to provide farmers information. We conclude by discussing policy implications for knowledge communication and inclusive water governance.
Ferreira, Pedro (author), Gupta, Nakull (author), O'Neill, Jacki (author), and Cutrell, Edward (author)
Format:
Conference paper
Publication Date:
2015-03
Published:
ACM New York, NY, USA
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 102 Document Number: D10907
Notes:
12 pages., CSCW '15 Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing, via online database, ACM Digital Library., With the wide penetration of mobile internet, social networking (SN) systems are becoming increasingly popular in the developing world. However, most SN sites are text heavy, and are therefore unusable by low-literate populations. Here we ask what would an SN application for low-literate users look like and how would it be used? We designed and deployed KrishiPustak, an audio-visual SN mobile application for low-literate farming populations in rural India. Over a four month deployment, 306 farmers registered through the phones of eight agricultural mediators making 514 posts and 180 replies. We conducted interviews with farmers and mediators and analyzed the content to understand system usage and to drive iterative design. The context of mediated use and agricultural framing had a powerful impact on system understanding (what it was for) and usage. Overall, KrishiPustak was useful and usable, but none-the-less we identify a number of design recommendations for similar SN systems.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 147 Document Number: C23441
Notes:
Reports on other topics featuring interviews with rural Americans can be found at www.wkkf.org., This report is part of a project seeking to understand how various groups perceive rural America, its challenges and strengths. "Perceptions of rural America" looks at how certain news organizations report on the rural population. Researchers analyzed the events and issues making news, the sources quoted, and the opinions these sources expressed about the current and future state of rural America. Researchers conducted a content analysis of news coverage during the six-month period from Jan. 1, 2002, through June 30, 2002, in a sample of major newspapers, news magazines and television networks.
8 pages., Via online journal., Agricultural communication to mitigate climate change enables information dissemination of both scientific knowledge (SCK) and indigenous knowledge (IDK) for practical farming. This research analyzed knowledge utilization and conducted community-based participatory communication to propose a practical agricultural communication framework for climate mitigation. Based on a qualitative method of data collection in Phichit province, the key findings showed that SCK and IDK can be mutually utilized to enhance the good relationship among the people and for the people with nature. The participatory communication processes consisted of planning, interventions, and monitoring and empowerment. The successful farmers employing the farming practices of not burning rice straw, rice straw composting, and alternative wetting and drying technique were the main senders. The messages were related to their farming practices focusing on a practical and understandable message and graphic explanations. Vinyl was selected as a communication material for signage in the most noticeable areas in their communities. This research highlights that participatory communication with group dynamics and communication promotion mechanisms at both local and national levels should be enhanced.
21 pages., via online journal., This article offers a critical rhetorical ecofeminist analysis of the Meatless Monday campaign, a U.S.-based meat reduction initiative focused on public health and the environment. By examining the campaign's online discourse, the study sheds light on vegetarian advocacy defined by an apolitical small-steps strategy and identifies constraints on the campaign's significant empowerment potential. Extending past scholarship on how some vegetarian discourses resist and reproduce meat-eating culture's hegemonic norms of gender, race/ethnicity, class, and human–nonhuman relations, I develop and demonstrate what I call the critique of neoliberal backgrounding as an intersectional ecofeminist heuristic. I conclude that the campaign should address the meaningful consequences that its affirmation of neoliberalism has for its targeted areas of concern and for interconnected societal problems.
8 pages., Via online journal, This paper examines the effect of farmers' access to communication technologies (CTs) on farmers' agricultural output at the aggregate level in the People's Republic of China (P.R. China) based on panel data. The paper uses a dynamic Cobb–Douglas aggregate production function and the generalized method of moments (GMM) as estimation techniques to estimate the parameters of interests. The research findings are: the estimated effects (measured by elasticity) of teledensity on the provincial level agricultural output have been positive and statistically significant both in the short and long runs. In the long-run, the size of the effect is substantial: from 0.94 to 1.06. This implies that the agriculture sector of the P. R. China has some potentials to derive benefit from the use of CTs like telephone. Hence, the Chinese government should consider policy support to expand communication infrastructure for the farmers
Prokopy, Linda S. (author), Hart, Chad E. (author), Massey, Raymond (author), Widhalm, Melissa (author), Klink, Jenna (author), Andresen, Jeffery (author), Angel, James (author), Blewett, Thomas (author), Doering, Otto C. (author), Elmore, Roger (author), Gramig, Benjamin M. (author), Guinan, Patrick (author), Hall, Beth L. (author), Jain, Atul (author), Knutson, Cody L. (author), Lemos, Maria Carmen (author), Morton, Lois Wright (author), Niyogi, Dev (author), Power, Rebecca (author), Shulski, Martha D. (author), Song, Carol X. (author), Takle, Eugene S. (author), and Todey, Dennis (author)
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
2015-09
Published:
USA: Elsevier
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 160 Document Number: D07789
