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    2. Harvesting shellfish? get the app

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    Collection:
    Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
    Contributers:
    Beck, Lena (author)
    Format:
    Online article
    Publication Date:
    2023-09-28
    Published:
    USA: Modern Farmer
    Location:
    Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 206 Document Number: D12971
    Notes:
    10 pages, Toxins, pollution and invisible boundary lines are obstacles to harvesting bivalves such as clams and oysters. A new cohort of cellphone and web apps promises to help people farm and harvest shellfish more responsibly.

    3. USDA reports records interest in its conservation and clean energy programs

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    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.

    5. Contextual realities and poverty traps: why South Asian smallholder farmers negatively evaluate conservation agriculture

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    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.

    6. Farmer perceived challenges toward conservation practice usage in the margins of the corn belt, USA

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    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.

    7. Scarce water in site: a content analysis of news coverage of The Sites Reservoir Project

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    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.

    8. Not all light spectra were created equal: can we harvest light for optimum food-energy co-generation?

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    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.

    9. The role of conservation agriculture in bridging gender gaps in Tanzania: the case of sustainable agriculture Tanzania

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    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.

    10. Using targeted messages to improve farmer engagement in conservation programs

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    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.

    16. “How can you put a price on the environment?” Farmer perspectives on stewardship and payment for ecosystem services

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    Collection:
    Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
    Contributers:
    White, A.C. (author), Faulkner, D.S. (author), Mendex, V.E. (author), and Niles, M.T. (author)
    Format:
    Journal article
    Publication Date:
    2022-04-01
    Published:
    United States: Soil and Water Conservation Society
    Location:
    Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 205 Document Number: D12529
    Journal Title:
    Journal of Soil and Water Conservation
    Journal Title Details:
    41
    Notes:
    14 pages, As agricultural conservation priorities evolve to address new complex social-ecological problems and emerging social priorities, new conservation incentive program participation and success can be enhanced by incorporating local stakeholder preferences into program design. Our research explores how farmers incorporate ecosystem services into management decisions, their willingness to participate in payment for ecosystem services programs, and factors beyond compensation level that would influence participation. We conducted three focus groups with 24 participants between January of 2019 and May of 2019 in Vermont. Our study revealed that a strong, intrinsic stewardship ethic motivates farmers to enhance ecosystem service provisioning from their farms, though financial pressures often limit decision-making. These results suggest that programs with sufficient levels of payment may attract participation, at least among some types of farmers, to enhance ecosystem services from farms in Vermont. However, farmers may be deterred from participating by perceived unfairness and distrust of the government based on previous experiences with regulations and conservation incentive structures. Farmers also expressed distrust of information about ecosystem services supply that conflicts with their perceptions of agroecosystem functioning, unless delivered by trusted individuals from the extension system. The delivery of context-specific information on how management changes impact ecosystem service performance from trusted sources could enhance farmers’ decisions, and would aptly complement payments. Additionally, farmers expressed a desire to see a program that both achieves additionality and rewards farms who have been stewards, goals that are potentially at odds. Our findings offer important insights for policy makers and program administrators who need to understand factors that will influence farmers’ willingness to participate in payment for ecosystem service programs and other conservation practice adoption initiatives, in Vermont and elsewhere.

    17. Water conservation: extension agents’ perceptions of issue importance, professional abilities, and landowner needs

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    Collection:
    Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
    Contributers:
    McCrary, Audrey (author), Burger, Leslie M. (author), Downey, Laura (author), and Baker, Beth H. (author)
    Format:
    Journal article
    Publication Date:
    2022-03-11
    Published:
    United States: University of Clemson Press
    Location:
    Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 205 Document Number: D12533
    Journal Title:
    Journal of Extension
    Journal Title Details:
    V. 60, Iss. 1
    Notes:
    13pgs, The Extension Service is one of many agencies charged with increasing awareness and knowledge of research-based agricultural conservation practices. A regional survey of Extension agents with agriculture and natural resources responsibilities was conducted to assess the need for in-service training on 11 water resource conservation topics. The highest priority training needs were for topics related to complex interactions and drivers of agricultural water pollution. This article highlights the implications of these results and offers broader perspective on bringing the Borich model of needs assessment into the agricultural and natural resources realm of subject matter expertise.

    19. Conservation in the news: comparing news coverage of nutrient reduction in agricultural and non-agricultural news outlets in iowa

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    Collection:
    Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
    Contributers:
    Witzling, Laura (author), Wald, Dara M. (author), and Williams, Eric (author)
    Format:
    Journal article
    Publication Date:
    2022
    Published:
    USA: New Prairie Press
    Location:
    Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 205 Document Number: D12605
    Journal Title:
    Journal of Applied Communication
    Journal Title Details:
    V. 106, N.2
    Notes:
    20 pgs., Twelve U.S. states were tasked with developing nutrient reduction strategies to help address hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico. To better understand the kinds of messages different stakeholders in these states are likely to encounter about such strategies, we conducted a content analysis focused on the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy (INRS). We examined 483 articles in two agricultural and two non-agricultural news outlets. We found that agricultural news outlets more often led with agricultural themes and more often used agricultural representatives as sources. The non-agricultural news outlets more often quoted representatives of environmental groups. News articles infrequently led with science or health themes. The volume of coverage over time in three of the four news outlets appeared followed similar issue attention cycles. Differences among the outlets may lead to differences in stakeholders’ knowledge or views about the INRS and conservation, posing challenges to consensus-building.