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2. USDA reports records interest in its conservation and clean energy programs
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- United States Department of Agriculture (author)
- Format:
- Press release
- Publication Date:
- 2023-09-19
- Published:
- USA: United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 206 Document Number: D12964
- Notes:
- 3 pages. Accessed through AgriMarketing.
3. How Tops Friendly Markets tackles food waste, recycling and conserving energy
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Sowder, Amy (author)
- Format:
- Online article
- Publication Date:
- 2023-09-11
- Published:
- USA: The Packer
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 206 Document Number: D12949
- Notes:
- 10 pages
4. Contextual realities and poverty traps: why South Asian smallholder farmers negatively evaluate conservation agriculture
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Chaudhary, A. (author), Timsina, P. (author), Karki, E. (author), Sharma, A. (author), Suri, B. (author), Sharma , R. (author), and Brown, B. (author)
- Format:
- Journal Article
- Publication Date:
- 2023-02-20
- Published:
- England: Cambridge University Press
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 206 Document Number: D12837
- Journal Title:
- Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems
- Journal Title Details:
- Online
- Notes:
- 10pgs, Conservation agriculture-based sustainable intensification (CASI) is gaining prominence as an agricultural pathway to poverty reduction and enhancement of sustainable food systems among government and development actors in the Eastern Gangetic Plains (EGP) of South Asia. Despite substantial investment in research and extension programs and a growing understanding of the agronomic, economic and labor-saving benefits of CASI, uptake remains limited. This study explores farmer experiences and perspectives to establish why farmers choose not to implement CASI systems despite a strong body of recent scientific evidence establishing the benefits of them doing so. Through thematic coding of semi-structured interviews, key constraints are identified, which establishes a narrative that current households' resources are insufficient to enable practice change, alongside limited supporting structures for resource supplementation. Such issues create a dependency on subsidies and outside support, a situation that is likely to impact any farming system change given the low-risk profiles of farmers and their limited resource base. This paper hence sets out broad implications for creating change in smallholder farming systems in order to promote the adoption of sustainable agricultural technologies in resource-poor smallholder contexts, especially with regard to breaking the profound poverty cycles that smallholder farmers find themselves in and which are unlikely to be broken by the current set of technologies promoted to them.
5. Farmer perceived challenges toward conservation practice usage in the margins of the corn belt, USA
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Kumar Adhikari, Ram (author), Wang, Tong (author), Jin, Hailong (author), Ulrich-Schad, Jessica D. (author), Sieverding, Heidi L. (author), and Clay, David (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2023-01-14
- Published:
- England: Cambridge University Press
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 206 Document Number: D12834
- Journal Title:
- Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems
- Journal Title Details:
- Online
- Notes:
- 14pgs, While conservation practices promote soil health and reduce the negative environmental effects from agricultural production, their adoption rates are generally low. To facilitate farmer adoption, we carried out a survey to identify potential challenges faced by farmers regarding conservation tillage and cover crop adoption in the western margin of the US Corn Belt. We found farmers' top two concerns regarding conservation tillage were delayed planting, caused by slow soil warming in spring, and increased dependence on herbicide and fungicides. Narrow planting window and lack of time/labor were perceived by farmers as the two primary challenges for cover crop adoption. Some sense of place factors, including the commonly included dimensions of attachment, identity and dependence, played a role in farmers' perceived challenges. For example, respondents more economically dependent on farming perceived greater challenges. We found that farmers' challenge perceptions regarding reduced yield and lack of time/labor significantly decreased as years of usage increased, implying that time and experience could dilute some challenges faced by farmers. Our findings indicate that social network use, technical guidance and economic subsidies are likely to address the concerns of farmers and facilitate their adoption of conservation practices.
6. Scarce water in site: a content analysis of news coverage of The Sites Reservoir Project
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Lawson, Cara (author), Austin-Castillo, Richard (author), and Chase, Lauren (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2023
- Published:
- USA: New Prairie Press
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 208 Document Number: D13285
- Journal Title:
- Journal of Applied Communications
- Journal Title Details:
- 107(2) : Article 4
- Notes:
- 16 pages, Plagued by recent and historic drought, the need for water storage and management solutions in California is apparent. As a potential solution, the Sites Reservoir project offers an opportunity to a state eager to conserve and better manage water. The Sites Reservoir project involves complexities from a variety of standpoints and stakeholder perspectives. This study investigated the frames and sources used by The Sacramento Bee to communicate about the Sites Reservoir project over a 10-year period. The most frequently used frames throughout the dataset were “policy and government” and “water conscious,” and the sources most frequently utilized for information about the project in the articles were elected officials, government agency representatives, and nonprofit representatives. The findings suggest water management is linked with political activities and supports the assertion that the media tend to focus on the role of policy and political opinion in water management issues. At the same time, the findings suggest the need for water solutions is evident, given the prominence of the “water conscious” frame. Future studies should evaluate frames over time, and investigate the potential nuance between frames used to communicate about water management in different areas of the United States facing water management issues.
7. Not all light spectra were created equal: can we harvest light for optimum food-energy co-generation?
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Camporese, Matteo (author) and Abou Najm, Majdi (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2022-12
- Published:
- United States: Wiley Periodicals LLC
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 206 Document Number: D12886
- Journal Title:
- Earth's Future
- Journal Title Details:
- Volume 10, Issue 12
- Notes:
- 16pgs, Humanity's growing appetites for food and energy are placing unprecedented yield targets on our lands. Chasing those ever-expanding land intensification targets gave rise to monocultures and sharpened the divide between food and energy production groups. Here, we argue that this does not have to be a zero-sum game if food and energy can be co-generated in the same land. Co-generation can lead to sustainable intensification but requires a paradigm shift in the way we manage our resources, particularly light. Using an extended model of plant photosynthesis and transpiration, we demonstrate how plants react to different incident light spectra and show that manipulating light could be effective for boosting land and water efficiencies, thus potentially improving soil health. This knowledge can possibly unlock the real potential of promising modern agricultural technologies that target optimization of light allocations such as agrivoltaics. This study suggests that the blue part of the light spectrum is less efficient in terms of carbon assimilation and water use and could be more effectively used to produce solar energy, while the red part could efficiently produce biomass. A sensitivity analysis to the most important crop and environmental variables (irradiance, air temperature, humidity, and CO2 concentration) shows that plant response to different light treatments is sensitive to environmental boundary conditions and is species-specific. Therefore, further research is necessary to assess which crops and climates are more suitable to optimize the proposed food-water-energy nexus.
8. The role of conservation agriculture in bridging gender gaps in Tanzania: the case of sustainable agriculture Tanzania
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Msuya, E. (author), Mhanga, M. (author), and Massawe, F.A. (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2022-10-20
- Published:
- Nigeria: Faclty Of Agriculture, Sokoine University of Agriculture
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 205 Document Number: D12762
- Journal Title:
- Tanzania Journal of Agricultural Sciences
- Journal Title Details:
- Vol. 21, N.1
- Notes:
- 9 pages, Despite agriculture’s great potential to Tanzania agricultural development, the sector faces diverse challenges. For example, existence of gender gaps in accessing agricultural production resources and benefits obtained from the same impede the sector’s growth. Therefore, adoption of conservation agriculture (CA) has been seen as one of the measures to address the sector limited productivity. Nonetheless, there is limited knowledge on how CA has managed to reduce gender inequalities in accessing both reproductive resources and benefits accrued from agriculture. This paper examines gender gaps in conservation agriculture programme implemented by Sustainable Agriculture in Tanzania (SAT), by specifically analyzing gender participation and relations in CA in Morogoro municipality and Morogoro district. This study adopted a mixed method approach whereby both qualitative and quantitative data were collected from four sites where SAT implements its activities. Findings show that CA has significantly reduced gander gaps in accessing production resources and services as well as raising women’s participation in decision making with regards to production and use of income obtained from sales of produce. Farmers regardless of the gender can access extension services, and credit, and are involved in various initiatives collectively. Despite the economic benefits, findings show that CA is laborious and takes much of farmers’ time, women being more affected. Therefore, it is recommended that the central and local governments and various stakeholders should promote the spread of conservation agriculture technologies since it reduces the biasness in agriculture and empowering women. Ensuring access to advanced cheap technologies to farmers. Nonetheless, there is need to ensure that female farmers are not overburdened in the process.
9. Using targeted messages to improve farmer engagement in conservation programs
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Weigel, C. (author), Cruse, R. (author), and Reddy, S. (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2022-09-16
- Published:
- USA: Soil and Water Conservation Society
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 205 Document Number: D12645
- Journal Title:
- Journal of Soil and Water Conservation
- Journal Title Details:
- V. 77, Iss. 5
- Notes:
- 6 pages, In this time of information overload, successfully engaging farmers with compelling outreach materials is a major challenge for conservation programs and related research projects. One potential approach is targeting information to the recipient, e.g., local rather than regional soil and water conditions, when sending messages to farmers. Targeted information may increase engagement by making materials stand out as more relevant and useful; conversely, it may decrease engagement by making farmers wary of the program and how it is using the information. We tested the effect of targeted information on farmer engagement using a large, randomized controlled trial in Iowa. In partnership with Iowa State University, we sent 2,996 farmers a single mailing with information about erosion at the local watershed (targeted) or state (control) level and measured their responses to a two-minute survey. We found that targeted information increased relative response rates by 20%, from 13.8% to 16.4%. This level of increase is meaningful for practitioners, as well as statistically significant. Our findings show that targeted information can be an important tool for practitioners and researchers seeking to better connect with farmers who are inundated with marketing mail.
10. Farmers poised to accelerate conservation efforts, ag secretary says
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Iowa Capital Dispatch (author) and Strong, Jared (author)
- Format:
- Online article
- Publication Date:
- 2022-09-02
- Published:
- Successful Farming
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 209 Document Number: D13388
- Notes:
- 4 pages