Great laments in rural-urban relations . That’s the title of a new analysis about why rural-urban dialogue often goes missing, or astray – and why reporters have a hard time understanding and contributing to it. Writing for the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists, Owen Roberts (University of Guelph) and Jim Evans (University of Illinois) dug into four types of hurdles and roadblocks that reporters encounter:
- Technical and practical challenges (for example, rural-urban issues becoming more scientifically complex.)
- Values at stake (for example, bumping up against traditions, past experiences, environmental preferences and values in conflict.)
- Legal, political and regulatory challenges (for example, when no clear rules relate to an issue.)
- Hurdles in the world of independent commercial journalism (for example, news of the day overwhelming media attention to longer-term issues.)
You will find more than 35 hurdles and roadblocks identified in this second feature in the authors’ series on improving rural-urban coverage. They welcome your help in adding to that list.
Title: Great laments in rural-urban relations
Posted at http://www.ifaj.org/news/urban_rural_relations.pdf
Author contacts: Roberts at owen@uoguelph.ca and Evans at evansj@illinois.edu
Landmark report on agricultural knowledge, science and technology for development . “The way the world grows its food will have to change radically to better serve the poor and hungry if the world is to cope with a growing population and climate change while avoiding social breakdown and environmental collapse.”
That overview introduced a major report, International assessment of agricultural knowledge, science and technology for development , released in April by the United Nations Environment Programme. More than 400 scientists, worldwide, prepared this massive study. And communications was cited as a key ingredient to success.
“Investment directed toward securing the public interest in agricultural science, education and training and extension to farmers has decreased at a time when it is most needed,” the report stated. It emphasized getting farmers (small and otherwise) engaged more actively and using their local knowledge. You can learn more about the report at:
http://www.unep.org > Search on document title
http://www.leisa.info > Search on document title
No magic bullets for encouraging soil conservation. One might think there are certain keys to encouraging farmers to adopt practices that conserve soil. Not so, according to findings reported in the journal, Food Policy . Researchers Duncan Knowler and Ben Bradshaw analyzed some 130 studies conducted globally about farmers’ adoption of conservation agriculture.
“…the primary finding of the synthesis is that there are few if any universal variables that regularly explain the adoption of conservation agriculture across past analyses.”
Their best advice? Tailor your conservation efforts to reflect the particular conditions of individual locales. That’s a call for the help of effective communicators.
Title: Adoption of conservation agriculture
“Farm groups are getting secretive,” observed John Greig, editor of Ontario Farmer (Canada), in an editorial last month. He cited recent examples of meetings and conferences being closed to media by some commodity groups and the Ontario Federation of Agriculture.
“Agriculture decision-making in Ontario is moving underground at a rapid pace, and few people have noticed,” he said, adding that it is “a scary day for democracy when those elected by a constituency are afraid to tell those who elected them what they believe.” He explained that when meetings are closed to the media farmers will not get the information they can use to help plan their businesses and figure out how rural society works in relation to their families and properties.
Title: Farm groups are getting secretive
Posted at: http://web.library.uiuc.edu/asp/agx/acdc/greig.pdf
Those rural community weeklies – a model for today’s “hyperlocal”media strategies . When Rob Curley helped create hyperlocal news coverage for the Washington Post he used a model based on his childhood memories of how local newspapers served his family in rural Kansas.
“The nature of local journalism has not changed significantly in many years,” Curley explained in a recent article in Nieman Reports . He suggested that some enduring guidelines cut across audiences, formats – even the use of new online media.
Posted at http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/07-4NRwinter/p53-curley.html
Welcome to a new student associate . The ACDC would like to welcome Chelsey Waltz as a new student associate to the Center. Chelsey grew up in the small farming community of LeRoy, Illnois. As a high school student, she took agriculture classes and participated in the FFA. She is now a sophomore in agricultural communications at the University of Illinois. She chose her major because reading and writing are her strong suits and she wanted to combine a communications degree with another subject she was interested in. During her time at the Center, Chelsey hopes to gain experience doing research and journalism related to agricultural communications.
Online news services. Recent? Wait a minute. They have been evolving for more than 160 years, according to an analysis by An Nguyen in First Monday , a peer-reviewed journal on the Internet. This fascinating pre-Web evolution includes the telegraph, telephone, audiotext, teletext, videotext and other online venues.
Agricultural information services, internationally, have been an important part of this history. You can identify hundreds of documents about agricultural uses of them by going to the ACDC search page and conducting “Subject” searches on those terms.
Article posted at http://firstmonday.org > Search on the title, “Interaction between technologies and society”
Communicator activities approaching
No, the lexophiles (lovers of words) aren’t finished yet . Thanks to Donald Schwartz for restocking our collection of words at play. Among the expressions, we look especially for those that touch on the themes of interest to ACDC – food, agriculture, communicating and decision making. With due apologies, here we go again:
- She had a boyfriend with a wooden leg, but broke it off.
- Local Area Network in Australia: the LAN down under.
- Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis.
Whew. Have you seen other examples of “words at play” for the ACDC collection?
Best regards and good searching. Please pass along your reactions, suggestions and ideas for the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center. Feel free to invite our help as you search for information. And please suggest (or send) agricultural communications documents we might add to this unique collection. We welcome them in hard copy (sent to Ag Com Documentation Center, 510 LIAC, 1101 S. Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801) or in electronic format sent to docctr@library.uiuc.edu .
Get in touch with us when you see interesting items in the ACDC collection and can’t gain full-text access through information in the citation, or through online searching. We will help you gain access.
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Issue 08-17, October 2008
Great laments in rural-urban relations. That’s the title of a new analysis about why rural-urban dialogue often goes missing, or astray – and why reporters have a hard time understanding and contributing to it. Writing for the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists, Owen Roberts (University of Guelph) and Jim Evans (University of Illinois) dug into four types of hurdles and roadblocks that reporters encounter:
- Technical and practical challenges (for example, rural-urban issues becoming more scientifically complex.)
- Values at stake (for example, bumping up against traditions, past experiences, environmental preferences and values in conflict.)
- Legal, political and regulatory challenges (for example, when no clear rules relate to an issue.)
- Hurdles in the world of independent commercial journalism (for example, news of the day overwhelming media attention to longer-term issues.)
You will find more than 35 hurdles and roadblocks identified in this second feature in the authors’ series on improving rural-urban coverage. They welcome your help in adding to that list.
Title: Great laments in rural-urban relations
Posted at http://www.ifaj.org/news/urban_rural_relations.pdf
Author contacts: Roberts at owen@uoguelph.ca and Evans at evansj@illinois.edu
Landmark report on agricultural knowledge, science and technology for development. “The way the world grows its food will have to change radically to better serve the poor and hungry if the world is to cope with a growing population and climate change while avoiding social breakdown and environmental collapse.”
That overview introduced a major report, International assessment of agricultural knowledge, science and technology for development, released in April by the United Nations Environment Programme. More than 400 scientists, worldwide, prepared this massive study. And communications was cited as a key ingredient to success.
“Investment directed toward securing the public interest in agricultural science, education and training and extension to farmers has decreased at a time when it is most needed,” the report stated. It emphasized getting farmers (small and otherwise) engaged more actively and using their local knowledge. You can learn more about the report at:
http://www.unep.org > Search on document title
http://www.leisa.info > Search on document title
No magic bullets for encouraging soil conservation. One might think there are certain keys to encouraging farmers to adopt practices that conserve soil. Not so, according to findings reported in the journal, Food Policy. Researchers Duncan Knowler and Ben Bradshaw analyzed some 130 studies conducted globally about farmers’ adoption of conservation agriculture.
“…the primary finding of the synthesis is that there are few if any universal variables that regularly explain the adoption of conservation agriculture across past analyses.”
Their best advice? Tailor your conservation efforts to reflect the particular conditions of individual locales. That’s a call for the help of effective communicators.
Title: Adoption of conservation agriculture
“Farm groups are getting secretive,” observed John Greig, editor of Ontario Farmer (Canada), in an editorial last month. He cited recent examples of meetings and conferences being closed to media by some commodity groups and the Ontario Federation of Agriculture.
“Agriculture decision-making in Ontario is moving underground at a rapid pace, and few people have noticed,” he said, adding that it is “a scary day for democracy when those elected by a constituency are afraid to tell those who elected them what they believe.” He explained that when meetings are closed to the media farmers will not get the information they can use to help plan their businesses and figure out how rural society works in relation to their families and properties.
Title: Farm groups are getting secretive
Posted at: http://web.library.uiuc.edu/asp/agx/acdc/greig.pdf
Those rural community weeklies – a model for today’s “hyperlocal”media strategies. When Rob Curley helped create hyperlocal news coverage for the Washington Post he used a model based on his childhood memories of how local newspapers served his family in rural Kansas.
“The nature of local journalism has not changed significantly in many years,” Curley explained in a recent article in Nieman Reports. He suggested that some enduring guidelines cut across audiences, formats – even the use of new online media.
Posted at http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/07-4NRwinter/p53-curley.html
Welcome to a new student associate. The ACDC would like to welcome Chelsey Waltz as a new student associate to the Center. Chelsey grew up in the small farming community of LeRoy, Illnois. As a high school student, she took agriculture classes and participated in the FFA. She is now a sophomore in agricultural communications at the University of Illinois. She chose her major because reading and writing are her strong suits and she wanted to combine a communications degree with another subject she was interested in. During her time at the Center, Chelsey hopes to gain experience doing research and journalism related to agricultural communications.
Online news services. Recent? Wait a minute. They have been evolving for more than 160 years, according to an analysis by An Nguyen in First Monday, a peer-reviewed journal on the Internet. This fascinating pre-Web evolution includes the telegraph, telephone, audiotext, teletext, videotext and other online venues.
Agricultural information services, internationally, have been an important part of this history. You can identify hundreds of documents about agricultural uses of them by going to the ACDC search page and conducting “Subject” searches on those terms.
Article posted at http://firstmonday.org > Search on the title, “Interaction between technologies and society”
Communicator activities approaching
November 12-14, 2008
“Making waves, lifting tides.” Annual conference of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting (NAFB) in Kansas City, Missouri USA.
Information: www.nafb.com
January 20-22, 2009
Knowledge “Share Fair” to showcase examples of good knowledge sharing practices in agricultural development and food security. Hosted by five international agencies and held at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome, Italy.
Information: www.sharefair.net
No, the lexophiles (lovers of words) aren’t finished yet. Thanks to Donald Schwartz for restocking our collection of words at play. Among the expressions, we look especially for those that touch on the themes of interest to ACDC – food, agriculture, communicating and decision making. With due apologies, here we go again:
- She had a boyfriend with a wooden leg, but broke it off.
- Local Area Network in Australia: the LAN down under.
- Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis.
Whew. Have you seen other examples of “words at play” for the ACDC collection?
Best regards and good searching. Please pass along your reactions, suggestions and ideas for the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center. Feel free to invite our help as you search for information. And please suggest (or send) agricultural communications documents we might add to this unique collection. We welcome them in hard copy (sent to Ag Com Documentation Center, 510 LIAC, 1101 S. Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801) or in electronic format sent to docctr@library.uiuc.edu.
Get in touch with us when you see interesting items in the ACDC collection and can’t gain full-text access through information in the citation, or through online searching. We will help you gain access.
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