Month: January 2003

A newspaper’s unique experience covering a farm worker issue. 

Transportation safety problems facing farm workers in the San Joaquin Valley of California prompted the Fresno Bee newspaper to try something new, using the Internet. The result: “Editors, publishers, webmasters, California Highway Patrolmen and California Assemblyman Dean Florez all came together for the first live bilingual forum on fresnobee.com, December 8.” According to a case report added recently to the ACDC collection, 1,500 people “hit” the forum on Internet.

Reference: Use a title search (“forum for all”) or author search (Ford) for the full citation. The report from Pew Center for Civic Journalism was posted on: www.pewcenter.org/doingcj/spotlight/displaySpotlight.php?id=30.

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What is information worth to food shoppers?

Plenty, according to a study reported recently in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. Purdue University researchers used a marketplace experiment to learn how shoppers in Mali decided what infant food to buy. “Regardless of income or education, mothers refuse to buy the unknown,” according to the researchers. Findings showed that “a lack of information about food safety is causing many impoverished mothers in Africa to buy brand-name infant food that costs about five times more than the generic brand.” Authors discussed the need for food certification systems, as means of building trust.

Reference: Use a title search (“Ag economist calculates”) for the full citation.

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Rural areas — promising growth sectors for telecommunications in India. 

“…changing the policy environment to create incentives to serve previously ignored and underserved populations is likely to be the fastest and most equitable means of achieving the goal of universal access to telecommunications and information technologies and services throughout India.” That was the counsel of Heather Hudson in a new book, Telecommunications reform in India.

Several of her points:

• Rural demand may be much greater than assumed.
• Rural areas may not be as expensive to serve as is often assumed.
• Rural benchmarks need not be set lower than urban benchmarks.
• Some rural areas may be viable for commercial franchises.

She offered policy suggestions for increasing rural teledensity in India from 0.4 lines per 1,000 population in 2000 to the national teledensity target of 7 per 100 by the year 2005 and 15 per 100 by 2010. Overall teledensity during 2000 was about 3 lines per 100.

Reference: Use a title search (“Lessons in telecommunications policy”) or author search (Hudson) for the full citation.

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What students need in agricultural communications courses.

A national Delphi study conducted by researchers at Texas Tech University identified 76 competencies that are appropriate for high school students who complete courses in agricultural communications. Results showed these competencies fall within 11 topic areas:

• Writing
• Computer/Information technology
• Agricultural industry
• Communications history
• Professional development
• Research/Information gathering
• Ethics
• Public relations/advertising/marketing
• Leadership development
• Legislative issues
• Communications skills

Reference: Use a title search (“High school agricultural communications”) or author search (Akers) for the full citation. The research paper was posted on: http://aaaeonline.ifas.ufl.edu/NAERC/2001/Papers/akers.pdf

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An enduring challenge to ag journalism students (and others). 

“Your work here is to study…nature in her manifold aspects,” said W. H. Burke to 18 class members in the first agricultural journalism course taught at the University of Illinois (Spring 1907). “But when you go out to engage in your life work…remember always and everywhere that the most important thing on earth is human nature; and human nature should be our chief study and the service of man our highest earthly aim.” Burke was a guest lecturer in the new course. He edited The Strawberry, published at Three Rivers, Michigan.

Reference: Use a title search (“Literary side of agricultural journalism”) or author search (Burke) for the full citation.

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You’ve been had! 

Is the title of a recent book subtitled, “How the media and environmentalists turned America into a nation of hypochondriacs.” The author, Melvin A. Benarde, is retired director of the Environmental Issues Center, Temple University. His wide-ranging analysis of what he considers scares and misinformation includes the health aspects of food and diets as well as air quality, nuclear power, hazardous waste and other matters. He cites examples of what he considers poor media coverage.

His central remedy: scientific literacy. “I propose a national campaign of scientific literacy that requires that all students demonstrate an understanding of the workings of science, religion, and pseudoscience. Such demonstration must put the media and environmentalists on notice: prepare for hard, searching questions.”

Reference: Use a title search (above) or author search (Benarde) for the full citation.

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Pending demise of debated university/corporation partnership. 

A commentary in the San Francisco Chronicle noted “the pending demise” of a biotechnology-related research partnership between the University of California-Berkeley and the Swiss firm Syngenta. “The five-year, $25 million deal, which began in 1998 when the sponsoring firm was named Novartis, became the flash point in a debate about whether university researchers were getting hooked on corporate cash.”

“This will probably delight critics and demoralize supporters of genetically engineered foods, and each side will credit — or blame — the small but vocal group of opponents based in the environmental movement.”

Reference: Use a title search (“Agriculture, biotech mix”) for the full citation. The commentary was posted (December 24, 2002) on:
http://131.104.232.9/agnet-archives.htm

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How about these rules for punctuating?

Some years ago, one typesetter explained his guidelines to a visitor in his printing office: “I set as long as I can hold my breath and then put in a comma. When I yawn I put in a semi-colon. And when I want a chew of tobacco I make a paragraph.” From The Typist.

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Professional activity approaching

April 15-17, 2003
“Keep it fresh.” Agri-Marketing Conference and Trade Show at San Diego,
California. Sponsored by the National Agri-Marketing Association (NAMA).
Information: http://www.nama.org/amc

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Best regards and good searching.

Please pass along your reactions, questions, and ideas for ACDC. Feel free to invite our help as you search for information. And please suggest (or send) agricultural communications documents that we might add to this collection. We welcome them in hard copy (sent to Ag Com Documentation Center, 69 Mumford Hall, 1301 W. Gregory Drive, Urbana, Illinois 61801) or electronic form (at docctr@library.uiuc.edu).

Framing agricultural (and other) issues better. 

Jan Schaffer, executive director of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, has argued that civic journalism can help reporters do their job better by framing stories better. At a workshop in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Schaffer cited an example from the editor of the Wichita Eagle newspaper. The editor described a “classic pro-con environmental story involving Kansas farmland in which his reporter decided to go and find the farmer who was neither totally for nor totally against the proposal, but was in-between.” The farmer as ambivalent, “like most readers.”

“Yet how often do we journalists play up the conflicts – the opposite sides or poles of an issue — rather than report the concerns of most of our readers. I’ll tell you one thing. It’s a lot harder to write about the gray area. We all know how to write the black and white.”

Reference: Use a title search (“Tapping hidden stories”) or author search (Schaffer) for the full citation. The speech was posted on: www.pewcenter.org/doingcj/speeches/s_tapping.html

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New way to promote a farm paper — host a wedding. 

“The P.V. Collins Publishing Company desires the honor of your company at the marriage of the Prettiest Farm Girl in the Northwest to The Lucky Man of her choice.” Where? At the Northwestern Agriculturist Cottage of the Minnesota State Fair. When? September 5, 1907. This wedding involved Mildred Nulph of Wyndmere, North Dakota, and Julius E. Watkins of Walcott, North Dakota.

We don’t know how many guests attended or new readers subscribed.

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Coverage of the recent U.S. farm broadcasters conference. 

Thanks to the National Association of Farm Broadcasters, we have added to the ACDCcollection 10 compact disks that feature program sessions at the 2002 NAFB conference in Kansas City, Missouri. Here are some of the topics addressed in these audio accounts:

• “How to sell farm broadcasting” (Panel of farm broadcasters.)
• “How to buy farm broadcasting” (Panel of agricultural marketing communicators.)
• “How to use farm broadcasting” (Panel of commodity representatives and farm broadcasters.)
• “The Wizard of Ads” (Creativity session that featured David Stanley, managing partner of Wizard of Ads, Inc.)
• “The digital edge” (Professional improvement session that featured web site construction, electronic editing, alternative editing and one farm broadcaster’s use of a web site.)
• “The best care in the air” (Session about organizational change and marketing strategies, featuring the approach used by Midwest Express Airlines.)

Reference: Check with us at the Center (docctr@library.uiuc.edu) if you are interested in these presentations.

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Also – we’ve added 33 remarkable farm radio interviews to the ACDC collection.

They are on audio cassettes in a three-volume series, “Lee Kline’s Iowa Notebook.” Lee Kline selected these interviews from his 40 years of farm broadcasting on WHO Radio, Des Moines, Iowa. He is widely known and respected for his effectiveness as a farm broadcaster – and especially for his creative human interest programming, his unique interviewing style and his emphasis on using sound, functionally. Students of farm broadcasting will find in these interviews some excellent examples of these skills. You can tell from interview titles such as:

“Perry Popcorn Lady”
“Riding in a Glider”
“Mule Power”
“Jumping Tractors”
“Sounds of Farm Machinery”
“The Auctioneers”
“Walking the Beans”

Reference: Contact the Center (docctr@library.uiuc.edu) if you are interested in further information about these three audio cassettes.

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When farmer-owned cooperatives go bankrupt. 

Eyes turn to communicators and educators when the post-mortems come out — suggesting that directors and other shareholders and publics need to be better informed and educated. That was the theme of a recent article in Rural Cooperatives magazine. The article reported on a timely panel discussion at the 2002 conference of Cooperative Communicators Association.

Reference: Use a title search (“Business failures underscore”) or author search (Campbell) for the full citation.

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How farmers prefer to learn. 

Here are the learning styles identified in a recent Iowa State University study among Iowa farmers:

• Active experimentation (learning by doing) seemed to be the preferred learning mode for topics related to physical farming resources (land, crops, livestock, machinery and buildings).
• Abstract learning (by observing others) seemed to be preferred for critical thinking activities such as markets and prices, whole farm planning and financial management.

Farmers in the study also rated the effectiveness of 26 different learning activities and information sources.

Reference: Use a title search (“Assessing the learning styles”) or author search (Trede) for the full citation. The research paper was posted on: http://aaaeonline.ifas.ufl.edu/NAERC/2000/web/g2.pdf

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“Large livestock farms viewed a ‘threat’.”

That title reflects findings from recent research among about 4,000 Ohio residents. Researcher Jeff Sharp of Ohio State University found that one-third said they are familiar with issues pertaining to large-scale poultry and livestock facilities. Among those, 71 percent said they are concerned that the farms pose a threat to Ohio’s water and stream quality.

Sharp recommended more public education about agriculture and more networking between farmers and non-farmers.

Reference: Use a title search (“Survey: large livestock farms viewed”) for the full citation. The report was posted on:
www.agriculture.purdue.edu/aganswers/2002/12-20_Large_Livestock_Threat.htm

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Check our latest “Feature Articles” page.

Labeling of biotech foods is a lively communications topic these days. If you are interested in it, we have identified some handy information for you on the ACDC web site. You will find nine documents (all retrievable in full text) about aspects such as need/value of labels, consumer attitudes toward them and consumers’ use of them.

Reference: On the ACDC home page, click on “Feature Articles.”

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Professional activity approaching

February 1-5, 2003
Annual meeting of the Agricultural Communications Section of the Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists (SAAS) at Mobile, Alabama.
Information: www.saasinc.org

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Best regards and good searching.

Please pass along your reactions, questions and ideas for ACDC. Feel free to invite our help as you search for information. And please suggest (or send) agricultural communications documents that we might add to this collection. We welcome them in hard copy (sent to Ag Com Documentation Center, 69 Mumford Hall, 1301 W. Gregory Drive, Urbana, Illinois 61801) or electronic form (at docctr@library.uiuc.edu).

Farmers adopting GM crops, but not feeling well informed about them.

In both 2001 and 2002, South Dakota ranked first in the proportion of total cropland area devoted to transgenic corn and soybean varieties among the major U.S. corn and soybean producing states. Even so, fewer than one-half of the South Dakota farmers who took part in a recent survey indicated they were well informed about transgenic crops. Researchers found: “Less than one-third stated that farmers in general have sufficient knowledge, and another one-third suggested that farmers do not have sufficient relevant knowledge, of biotechnology. Nearly a third of the respondents attributed the lack of knowledge of agricultural biotechnology to the difficulty in gaining access to objective information.”

Reference: Use a title search (“Farm level transgenic crop adoption”) or author search (Van der Sluis) for the full citation. The summary in Information Systems for Biotechnology News Report was posted on: www.isb.vt.edu/news/2002/news02.oct.html

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Reporters are “underaggressive” in covering genetically modified foods. 

Marc Kaufman, science reporter at the Washington Post, expressed that view at a recent conference on the role of media in keeping the public informed – or frightened – about the growing presence of biotechnology in food production. “It is unclear to me that the public is getting as much information on this as it should,” Kaufman said. Other panelists noted that the public’s lack of knowledge about this subject is not surprising, given the questions that still can’t be answered, even by experts.

Reference: To see a summary about this conference, use a title search (“Conference looks at role”) or author search (Powell) for the full citation. The summary article in Harvard University Gazette was posted on: www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/12.05/11-biofood.html

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Health claims on food labels often confuse consumers

According to research carried out on behalf of the Food Standards Agency of the United Kingdom. A recent summary from the Agency identified sample sources of confusion on food labels. Here are some of the confusing terms identified, along with comments offered about them:

• Fresh, Pure, Natural “Consumers are dissatisfied with, and distrust, a wide range of [such] marketing terms,” which are not defined in law.
• Lite, Light The law doesn’t say what these terms mean, so manufacturers can use them to convey different qualities of a food, such as texture or calorie content.
• Low fat, Fat-free Such claims “should not be taken at face value.
• No added sugar, Unsweetened “This doesn’t mean to say that the food will not taste sweet, or that it will have a low sugar content.

Reference: Use a title search (“Health claims confuse”) for the full citation. The summary was posted online at: http://www.food.gov.uk/news/newsarchive/98783. A further title search (“Health claims on food packaging”) will identify detailed findings of the consumer research. This research report was posted at: www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/healtclaims.pdf

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Ag scientists being “harassed.”

According to an article in the Des Moines (Iowa) Register, some university and government scientists studying health threats associated with agricultural pollution say they are being “harassed by farmers and trade groups and silenced by superiors afraid to offend the powerful industry. … The heat comes from individual farmers, commodity groups and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which finances and controls much of the research.”

Reporter Perry Beeman described examples of such pressure and included responses from government and commodity representatives.

Reference: Use a title search (“Political pressure”) or author search (Beeman) for the full citation. The article was posted on: http://desmoinesregister.com/business/stories/c4789013/19874144.html

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Organic foods going mainstream.

“Gone are the days when organic foods were just for a small group of health fanatics,” said e-Brain Market Research in a recent research summary. An e-Brain Online Poll indicated that “nearly every American is not only familiar with organic products, but 58% of the public has purchased a food item labeled organic.” What’s driving this interest? Results of this web-based survey involving a national sample of 1,000 U.S. households point toward:

• Increased awareness of health issues
• Concerns about genetically modified food
• Concerns about chemicals

The summary also reported responses about where shoppers buy organic foods and where price fits into their buying behavior.

Reference: Use a title search (“Americans hunger for healthy options”) for the full citation. The report was archived (December 10, 2002) at: http://131.104.232.9/agnet-archives.htm

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When bad becomes normal (in the minds of those who work with poultry).

“Chicken producers have grown so used to seeing birds in cages with half their feathers missing that they believe it’s normal.” That’s the observation of livestock behaviorist Temple Grandin at a recent meeting cited in The Western Producer. The article by Mary MacArthur reported examples of problems on farms, in hatcheries and in processing plants. “This has got to change,” Grandin argued in her call for changed attitudes and higher standards. “This is absolutely totally awful.”

Reference: Use a title search (“Analyst says poultry growers”) or author search (MacArthur) for the full citation. The article was posted on: www.producer.com/articles/20021212/news/20021212news19.html

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Headed toward “that fiery land.” 

These days, many farm periodicals go to their readers without charge, through free controlled circulation. Subscription payments were more important (often troublesome) to publishers in earlier days of farm publishing. We can get a sense of friction in this short poem from a farm publisher’s autobiography in the ACDC collection. The poem is an editor’s preachment to readers:

The man who cheats his paper
Out of a single cent
Will never reach that heavenly land
Where old Elijah went.

But when at last his race is run,
This life of toil and woe,
He’ll straightway go to that fiery land
Where they never shovel snow.

Reference: Use a title search (“My first 80 years”) or author search (Poe) for the full citation. Page 89.

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Please let us know if you would rather not receive ACDC News. 

As Year 2003 begins we want to tell you how much we appreciate your interest in this e-newsletter. We hope it is helpful and convenient for you. However, we do not want to send something to you that you would rather not receive. So at any time please let us know if you would like to be removed from the list. You can do so by using the Documentation Center e-mail link below.

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Other persons to suggest? 

Also, let us know of associates or other persons you think might like to receive ACDC News through our free e-mailings of it.

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Professional activity approaching

February 1-5, 2003
Annual meeting of the Agricultural Communications Section of the Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists (SAAS) at Mobile, Alabama.
Information: www.saasinc.org

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Best regards and good searching.

Please pass along your reactions, questions and ideas for ACDC. Feel free to invite our help as you search for information. And please suggest (or send) agricultural communications documents that we might add to this collection. We welcome them in hard copy (sent to Ag Com Documentation Center, 69 Mumford Hall, 1301 W. Gregory Drive, Urbana, Illinois 61801) or electronic form (at docctr@library.uiuc.edu).