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2. Automated pastures and the digital divide: How agricultural technologies are shaping labour and rural communities
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Rotz, Sarah (author), Gravely, Evan (author), Mosby, Ian (author), Duncan, Emily (author), Finnis, Elizabeth (author), Horgan, Mervyn (author), LeBlanc, Joseph (author), Martin, Ralph (author), Tait Neufeld, Hannah (author), Nixon, Andrew (author), Pant, Laxmi (author), Shalla, Vivian (author), and Fraser, Evan (author)
- Format:
- Online article
- Publication Date:
- 2019-02-13
- Published:
- Canada: Science Direct
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 7 Document Number: D10251
- Journal Title:
- Journal of Rural Studies
- Notes:
- 11 pages., Via online article, A “digital revolution” in agriculture is underway. Advanced technologies like sensors, artificial intelligence, and robotics are increasingly being promoted as a means to increase food production efficiency while minimizing resource use. In the process, agricultural digitalization raises critical social questions about the implications for diverse agricultural labourers and rural spaces as digitalization evolves. In this paper, we use literature and field data to outline some key trends being observed at the nexus of agricultural production, technology, and labour in North America, with a particular focus on the Canadian context. Using the data, we highlight three key tensions observed: rising land costs and automation; the development of a high-skill/low-skilled bifurcated labour market; and issues around the control of digital data. With these tensions in mind, we use a social justice lens to consider the potential implications of digital agricultural technologies for farm labour and rural communities, which directs our attention to racial exploitation in agricultural labour specifically. In exploring these tensions, we argue that policy and research must further examine how to shift the trajectory of digitalization in ways that support food production as well as marginalized agricultural labourers, while pointing to key areas for future research—which is lacking to date. We emphasize that the current enthusiasm for digital agriculture should not blind us to the specific ways that new technologies intensify exploitation and deepen both labour and spatial marginalization.
3. Blueberry producers' attitudes towards harvest mechanization for fresh market
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Gallardo, Karina R. (author), Stafne, Eric T. (author), Devetter, Lisa Wasko (author), Zhang, Qi (author), Li, Charlie (author), Takeda, Fumiomi (author), Williamson, Jeffrey (author), Yang, Wei Qiang (author), Cline, William O. (author), Beaudry, Randy (author), Allen, Renee (author), and Washington State University Mississippi State University University of Georgia University of Florida Oregon State University Michigan State University
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2018-02
- Published:
- United States: American Society for Horticultural Science
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 11 Document Number: D10337
- Journal Title:
- HortTechnology
- Journal Title Details:
- 28(1) : 10-16
- Notes:
- 7 pages., Via online journal., The availability and cost of agricultural labor is constraining the specialty crop industry throughout the United States. Most soft fruits destined for the fresh market are fragile and are usually hand harvested to maintain optimal quality and postharvest longevity. However, because of labor shortages, machine harvest options are being explored out of necessity. A survey on machine harvest of blueberries (Vaccinium sp.) for fresh market was conducted in 2015 and 2016 in seven U.S. states and one Canadian province. Survey respondents totaled 223 blueberry producers of various production sizes and scope. A majority (61%) indicated that their berries were destined for fresh markets with 33% machine harvested for this purpose. Eighty percent said that they thought fruit quality was the limiting factor for machine-harvested blueberries destined for fresh markets. Many producers had used mechanized harvesters, but their experience varied greatly. Just less than half (47%) used mechanical harvesters for fewer than 5 years. Most respondents indicated that labor was a primary concern, as well as competing markets and weather. New technologies that reduce harvesting constraints, such as improvements to harvest machinery and packing lines, were of interest to most respondents. Forty-five percent stated they would be interested in using a modified harvest-aid platform with handheld shaking devices if it is viable (i.e., fruit quality and picking efficiency is maintained and the practice is cost effective). Overall, the survey showed that blueberry producers have great concerns with labor costs and availability and are open to exploring mechanization as a way to mitigate the need for hand-harvest labor.
4. Caring for children while working in agriculture - the perspective of farmworker parents
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Liebman, Amy K. (author), Simmons, Juliana (author), Salzwedel, Marsha (author), Tovar-Aguilar, Antonio (author), and Lee, Barbara C. (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2017
- Published:
- USA
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 202 Document Number: D11989
- Journal Title:
- Journal of Agromedicine
- Journal Title Details:
- 22(4) : 406-415
- Notes:
- 11 pages, Online via UI Library electronic subscription., Report of research among farmworker families living and working in three Florida communities. Most reported childcare access as a challenge. Findings offer ideas for industry support of childcare as an important workforce investment.
5. Case Farms responds to our story
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Format:
- Article
- Publication Date:
- 2017
- Published:
- USA
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 124 Document Number: D11198
- Notes:
- Online from ProPublica. 3 pages., Report of a response to ProPublica by a poultry company, Case Farms, described by government officials as "outrageously dangerous." Focus is on accuracy of information provided and reported.
6. Computers and the alienation of thinking: from deep blue to the Googlemobile
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Dean, Kathryn (author)
- Format:
- Book chapter
- Publication Date:
- 2016
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: D08868
- Notes:
- Pages 215-256 in Ormrod, James S. (ed.), Changing our environment, changing ourselves: nature, labour, knowledge and alienation. United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan UK, London. 315 pages.
7. Conditional love: representations of migrant work in Canadian newsprint media
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Inouye, Kimiko (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2012-09
- Published:
- Canada
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 142 Document Number: D06418
- Journal Title:
- Social Identities
- Journal Title Details:
- 18(5) : 573-592
8. Everyone had cameras: photographers, photography and the farmworker experience in California: a photographic essay
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Street, Richard Steven (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2005
- Published:
- USA
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 161 Document Number: C26477
- Journal Title:
- California History
- Journal Title Details:
- 83(2) : 8-26
- Notes:
- Emphasizes the important role photographers have played in calling attention to issues involving California farm workers.
9. For whom will the crop be promoted? a search for gender equity along the grain-legume value chains in Uganda
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Okiror , J. J. (author), Twanza, B. (author), Orum, B. (author), Ebanyat, P. (author), Kule, E. B. (author), Tegbaru, A. (author), and Ayesiga, C. (author)
- Format:
- journal articles
- Publication Date:
- 2021-10
- Published:
- Academic Journals
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: D12402
- Journal Title:
- Journal of Agricultural Extension and Rural Development
- Journal Title Details:
- V. 13 N. 4
- Notes:
- 12 pages, There is growing interest in gender analysis and value chain analysis as tools for ensuring equitable participation in agricultural commodity markets. This study examined the gender factors that influence the patterns and levels of participation by women and men in grain value chains in Uganda. Data were collected from six districts in three regions of Uganda using qualitative gender tools. Findings show that marked division of labour along gender-lines happens at postharvest handling stages where threshing and winnowing is mostly done by women while men supervise storage and also control marketing and incomes. Division of labour is due to socio-cultural ascriptions to the sexes at community level with women having to work for longer hours than their male counterparts. Groundnuts were regarded as women’s crop while soya beans were for men. Regional variations were not significant but there were marked behavioral differences between the poorer and richer households across entire value chains from production to marketing with the poor exercising more caution during marketing to spread risks to the next harvest while the rich preferred one-time bulk sales. Specific interventions are needed to upgrade women participation in grain-legume businesses and scale-up labour saving post-harvest technologies especially draught animals, threshers, tarpaulins and hullers to ease drudgery on women and increase men’s participation.
10. Golden ARC Award winner: feature writing
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2020
- Published:
- USA: Agricultural Relations Council, New Prague, Minnesota.
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 202 Document Number: D11981
- Journal Title:
- ARCLight
- Journal Title Details:
- Fall
- Notes:
- Via online issue. 1 page., Announcement and brief description of the award-winning ARC feature story, "Overcoming labor challenges," entered by Farm Credit East.
11. Hog wild: the battle for workers' rights at the world's largest slaughterhouse
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Waltz, Lynn (author)
- Format:
- Book
- Publication Date:
- 2018
- Published:
- USA: University of Iowa Press, Iowa City, Iowa.
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: D09976
- Notes:
- 288 pages.
12. Information communication technologies and environmental innovations in firms: joint adoptions and productivity effects
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Antonioli, Davide (author), Cecere, Grazia (author), and Mazzanti, Massimiliano (author)
- Format:
- Online journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2018
- Published:
- Taylor & Francis
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 18 Document Number: D10503
- Journal Title:
- Journal of Environmental Planning and Management
- Journal Title Details:
- 61(11): 1905-1933
- Notes:
- 30 pages., via online journal., Information communication technology (ICT) and environmental innovation (EI) are relevant waves of the ongoing technological revolution. We study the complementarity in innovation adoption to test the research hypothesis that the higher the diffusion and intensity of usage of ICT and EI, the higher a firm’s productivity performance might be. However, it is not certain that the use of different innovations stemming from different innovation paths generates higher productivity. To test our hypothesis, we use original survey data concerning manufacturing firms in Northeast Italy including detailed information on both ICT and EI. Empirical evidence shows that there are still wide margins to improve the integration between EI and ICT in order to exploit their potential benefits on productivity. The awareness of specific synergies seems to mainly characterise the heavy polluting firms that are subject to more stringent environmental constraints, while some trade-offs tend to emerge for the remaining firms.
13. Millenium development goals and combating agricultural child labour in Nigeria
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Ben-Chendo, G.N. (author), Lemchi, J.I. (author), Nwosu, F.O. (author), and Ehirim, N.C. (author)
- Format:
- Review
- Publication Date:
- 2014-10-31
- Published:
- Academic Journals
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 1 Document Number: D10170
- Journal Title:
- African Journal of Marketing Management
- Journal Title Details:
- 6(6) : 75-81
- Notes:
- 7 pages., Via online journal., A simmering crisis in the Nigerian agriculture today involves labour and the crisis manifests itself in the degree of labour availability, labour demand and labour productivity. One of the major products of this crisis is the increased participation of children in paid, non-familiar agricultural jobs. They are frequently employed as farm labourers, bird scarers, food crop harvesters, processors and hawkers. More than 132 million children work in agriculture. Agriculture ranks as one of the three most dangerous work activities, followed by mining and construction. Child labour is increasing in postharvest processing, transport, marketing and a range of agroindustries. Child labour is maybe one of the most striking indicators identifying vulnerable children and as such pointing to shortcomings in several of the millennium goals as poverty eradication, education for all, gender equality, combating HIV/AIDS and creation of a global partnership for development. Most working children do so after a decision in their parental household. To understand the household labour supply decisions, relation to the labour market and to public interventions is critical in designing programmes in order to achieve the MDGs. The research on child labour represents in this respect a largely untapped resource of knowledge for policymakers in the fields of agriculture, education programmes and poverty reduction programmes. The effect of lack of education opportunities on child labour is well documented, but existence of widespread agricultural child labour also reduces the effectiveness of investment in education. It is recommended in this paper that the legislator should enact laws that will reduce agricultural child labour through redistribution of the nation’s resources, women should be integrated in the fight to combat child labour and that alternative income sources should be provided for rural families whose children are the most vulnerable.
14. Public-Private partnerships for developing technology transfer: the role of famer organizations
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Byrnes, Kerry J. (author)
- Format:
- Discussion paper
- Publication Date:
- 1988-11-28
- Published:
- USA
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: KerryByrnes4; Folder: Presentations at Professional Meetings File Document Number: D01620
- Notes:
- Kerry J. Byrnes Collection, Lecture and discussion, 25 pages.
15. Spectacles of labor: Viewing food production through a television screen
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Retzinger, Jean (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2010-12-16
- Published:
- International
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 199 Document Number: D09776
- Journal Title:
- Environmental Communication
- Journal Title Details:
- 4(4) : 441-460
16. The Green Revolution Simulation: Player's Handbook
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Byrnes, Kerry J. (author)
- Format:
- Special Report
- Publication Date:
- 1984-03-29
- Published:
- USA
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: KerryByrnes4; Folder: Green Revolution Game File Document Number: D01652
- Notes:
- Kerry J. Byrnes Collection, International Fertilizer Development Center Training Material,9 pages. (2 copies)
17. The virtual realities of US/Mexico border ecologies in Maquilapolis and Sleep Dealer
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Orihuela, Sharada Balachandran (author) and Hageman, Andrew Carl (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2011-05-19
- Published:
- International
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 199 Document Number: D09779
- Journal Title:
- Environmental Communication
- Journal Title Details:
- 5(2) : 166-186
18. Understanding Current Labor Shortage and Mechanization in New Jersey Nursery Crop Operations
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Gohil, Hemant (author), Waller, Timothy (author), and Cabrera, Raul (author)
- Format:
- Journal Article
- Publication Date:
- 2022-12-19
- Published:
- United States: Clemson University Press
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 206 Document Number: D12791
- Journal Title:
- Journal of Extension
- Journal Title Details:
- V. 60, N. 4
- Notes:
- 8pgs, We conducted a survey of New Jersey’s nursery industry to understand the current levels of labor shortage, how this has affected specific tasks related to the production capacity of the industry, and the actual level of mechanization. Survey results identified priority areas needing mechanization. There is a need for greater mechanization in almost all areas of nursery production to reduce the reliance on labor and or improve the efficiency of labor. Other Implications related to Extension programming on nursery mechanization are also discussed.
19. Vegetable producers' perceptions of food safety hazards in the Midwestern USA
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Ivey, Melanie L. Lewis (author), LeJeune, Jeffrey T. (author), and Miller, Sally A. (author)
- Format:
- Journal article abstract
- Publication Date:
- 2012
- Published:
- USA
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 145 Document Number: D06548
- Journal Title:
- Food Control
- Journal Title Details:
- 26(2) : 453-465
20. Women's work, women's lives: a comparative economic perspective
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Blau, Francine D. (author) and Ferber, Marianne A. (author)
- Format:
- Working paper
- Publication Date:
- 1990-09
- Published:
- International
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 114 Document Number: D11014
- Notes:
- 32 pages., National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Working Paper No. 3447., Broad overview of women's economic status in countries around the world. It examined specifically such important issues as labor force participation, occupational segregation, earnings, education, and the amount of time spent on housework.