ACDC News – Issue 11-11

Posted on by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

How farmers are viewing and responding about climate change. We have been monitoring this topic, internationally.  Here are titles of sample reports from recent research:

  • “Factors influencing adoption and continued use of long-term soil and water conservation measures in five developing countries” (Tanzania, Ethiopia, Peru, Bolivia, Mali)  View the abstract here . Check with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu for help in gaining full-text access.

Please alert us to related documents that can help strengthen this important part of the ACDC collection.

“The nation needs better coverage of the farm bill.” An editorial during late 2010 in Columbia Journalism Review urged the U. S. press to commit to prominent, sustained, and substantive coverage of the 2012 Farm Bill.

“As the 2012 Farm Bill takes shape, journalists should devote less time to the incremental, insider drama on Capitol Hill, and more to explaining the issues and their consequences to a public that has little contact with the farm, but a huge stake in what happens there.”

Read a brief summary of it here , or get in touch with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu about full-text access.

International directory to online farm media .  World-newspapers.com provides links to 19 farming and agriculture magazines, newspapers and news services that offer open, online, full-text access.  They are based in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. Some provide general coverage. Others are specialized “verticals,” ranging in interest from specific crops and livestock sectors to the green industry.

You can review the list and gain access to them here .

New Agricultural Communication Oral History Project goes online. Natalie Daily Federer, extension educator and doctoral candidate at Purdue University, has completed her first round of oral histories in this field of interest.  And you can now view her introductory work online in a new special section of the ACDC website.

“I am passionate about history,” Natalie explains in introducing this ambitious research project. She is pursuing it through support from the international Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences (ACE). The main goal is to capture and preserve the voices, experiences, memories and insights of those who have retired from academic and professional work in the agricultural communication community.  To date she has conducted individual interviews with five retired professionals, as well as one group interview.  Her first four audio podcasts (10-14 minutes each) are available online for classroom and other professional development uses. A sample course exercise accompanies them.  You can explore the new Oral History section here .

Some keys to sustainable telecenters .  Researchers Rajendra Kumar and Michael Best found that telecenters and kiosks in five rural villages of south India were being used by a relatively small share of the village households.  This was the case even after the facilities had been in use for well over a year.  Users tended to be young, male students from relatively higher income households and community areas.  However, the researchers found significant planning and operational strategies that helped broaden the use of telecenters and make them more sustainable.  Those strategies included:

  1. Locating telecenters close to “socially and economically backward communities” and to champions within them.
  2. Placing them within a context compatible with use by women.
  3. Providing localized content and services.
  4. Making those services more affordable.

An overview of consumer willingness to pay for meat attributes. The International Journal on Food System Dynamics recently reported results of a meta-analysis of 23 studies about this subject between 2000 and 2008.  Researchers Gianni Cicia and Francesca Colantuoni found, for example, that:

  • Consumers are willing to pay 22 percent above the base price for the attribute “food safety.”
  • When on-farm traceability is available, consumers appear willing to pay a premium of nearly 17 percent over the base price.
  • The attribute “animal welfare” elicits a premium of 14 percent over the base price, “showing consumers’ interest about the life quality of domestic animals.”
  • European consumers are, on average, willing to pay more for meat traceable attributes than are North American consumers.

Communicator activities approaching.

  • July 23-27, 2011
    “Jazz it up!”  Agricultural Media Summit involving the American Agricultural Editors’ Association, Livestock Publications Council, Agri Council of American Business Media and Agricultural Communicators of Tomorrow in New Orleans, Louisiana USA. Information: http://www.agmediasummit.com
  • August 30-September 3, 2011
    20th European Seminar on Extension Education in Helsinki, Finland. Information: http://esee-2011.blogspot.com/
  • September 14-18, 2011
    “Experience new world agriculture.”  2011 Congress of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists in Guelph, Canada, and Niagara Falls. Information: http://www.ifaj2011.com

When funding fizzles .  We close this issue of ACDC News with an insight attributed to Lord Ernest Rutherford, renowned scientist of the early 1900s.  We feel sure this strategy applies to entrepreneurial agricultural journalists and communicators as well as the scientists he addressed:

“No money.  Well then, we must use our brains.”

Best regards and good searching.

Please pass along your reactions, suggestions and ideas. 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 Comm Documentation Center, 510 LIAC, 1101 S. Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801) or in electronic format sent to docctr@library.illinois.edu .

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