6 pages, Extension professionals are skilled at connecting with community partners and community members to identify needs and address challenges. This paper outlines how Extension professionals quickly responded to address rising rates of food insecurity in a rural Tennessee County during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through an extensive network of state, regional, and local partners, Extension professionals and partners planned and implemented mobile food distributions through the United States Department of Agriculture’s Farmers to Families program. These Extension-led efforts resulted in sustainable, community-driven initiatives to improve food insecurity. Lessons learned can help Extension professionals respond to emerging needs.
11 pages, Existing research and practice related to digital agriculture technology adoption is largely focused on large-scale producers. In this paper, we describe a case of adopting an advanced soil monitoring system in a community-based agricultural organization. We provide guidance for Extension professionals seeking to implement or promote digital agriculture technology adoption on: selecting appropriate technology, incorporating new technology into existing practices, harnessing local technology champions, and avoiding data-driven mission creep.
23 pages, We examined how an agricultural literacy professional development enhanced equity in seven secondary agriculture classrooms in a southeastern state. Utilizing the Equity Framework in Career and Technical Education and exploratory case study methodology, we examined the equitable barriers that seven secondary agriculture education teachers faced in their school sites and how targeted professional development might alleviate some of those challenges. Our findings revealed that all seven teachers faced barriers in their schools from two areas identified in the theoretical framework: educational adequacy and equal treatment. The professional development helped alleviate the educational adequacy barrier. More research is needed to elicit the role of professional development programs in counteracting equity barriers.
5 pages, While strategies may differ across geographical regions, FACS Extension professionals work to enhance nutrition education and increase food security in their communities. The four dimensions of food security developed by The Food and Agricultural Organization were reconceptualized to understand food security on an individual or at a community level. Using experiences from a summer internship with two urban counties, the EEUESA Model described here was designed to aid FACS Extension professionals in their efforts for nutrition education and to better understand how programming targets food security in their communities
9pgs, The goal of this literature review was to identify evidence-based curricula that support youth mental health with special attention to inclusion of access, equity, and belonging (AEB). Four databases were searched for peer-reviewed articles published between 2010 and 2019 related to youth mental health curricula. A total of 1446 articles were identified, and 171 articles underwent a full-text review. Of the 61 curricula identified, 44% addressed AEB to some extent and 65% showed program effectiveness. Four programs were recommended (Sources of Strength, Teen Mental Health First Aid, Dynamic Mindfulness, and Youth Mental Health First Aid) and eight conditionally recommended.
22 pages, In this paper, we investigate the link between windfall gains and losses of income associated with commodity exports and economic performance in a panel of 45 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries over the period from 1990 to 2019. Windfall gains and losses of income are measured in terms of fluctuations in a country-specific commodity terms of trade (CTOT) index in which each commodity is weighted by the ratio of exports of that commodity in the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). The CTOT index therefore reflects the commodity export specialisation for individual countries. The data on CTOT are taken from the International Monetary Fund. Additionally, we use changes in real GDP per capita as our SSA economic performance measure. We employ a random coefficient model that yields individual estimates for each of the countries included in the analysis. Our approach is based on the assumption that the effect of windfall gains and losses on real GDP per capita growth varies across different SSA countries. Our main conclusion can be elaborated as follows: first, natural resources have undoubtedly contributed to higher economic growth in SSA countries since 1990. Second, when SSA countries are analytically divided into two groups depending on their commodity export specialisation, we find that resource-rich countries—in particular oil rich—are the best economic growth performers during the observation period. Finally, we find that windfall gains from commodity exports are not significantly associated with increased real GDP per capita growth in most agriculture-exporting countries.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: D08810
Notes:
Pages 41-69 in Patrick D. Murphy, The media commons: globalization and environmental discourses. United States: University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield. 192 pages.
17 pages, via online journal, The greatest challenge now facing agricultural science is not how to increase production overall but how to enable resource-poor farmers to produce more.
The transfer-of-technology (TOT) model of agricultural research is part of the normal professionalism of agricultural scientists. In this model, scientists largely determine research priorities, develop technologies in controlled conditions, and then hand them over to agricultural extension to transfer to farmers. Although strong structures and incentives sustain this normal professionalism, many now recognise the challenge of its bad fit with the needs and conditions of hundreds of millions of resource-poor farm (RPF) families. In response to this problem, the TOT model has been adapted and extended through multi-disciplinary farming systems research (FSR) and on-farm trials. These responses retain power in the hands of scientists. Information is obtained from farmers and processed and analysed in order to identify what might be good for them. A missing element is methods to encourage and enable resource-poor farmers themselves to meet and work out what they need and want.
