Month: July 2010

“The largest Last Supper.” That’s how researchers B. Wansink and C. S. Wansink titled their recent journal article about research that revealed how the trend toward larger portion sizes of foods is nothing new. They analyzed the relative size of servings portrayed in 52 of the best known paintings of the Last Supper over the last millennium (1000-2000 AD/CE). Relative sizes of the main dish, the bread and the plate used in history’s most famous meal increased linearly.

You can read their International Journal of Obesity article here .

Simple information technologies BUT complex interaction and adoption. Tapan Parikh emphasized that dilemma in a 2009 article, “Engineering rural development.” Writing for readers interested in computing equipment, Parikh emphasized that the engineering process needs to involve social and human dimensions such as:

• Understanding of local users and their objectives
• User studies and ethnography used for decades to study human-computer interaction
• Rich learning from field tests and pilot deployment of varying scale and duration

Note: Thousands of documents in the ACDC collection reinforce this call for close collaboration between science/technology and the human and social dimensions of rural progress and wellbeing.

You can read the article here .

How to fail in using mobile phones for rural development . For more than five years, staff members at MobileActive.org have covered information technologies for development. “We have seen our share of failures,” they explain in a recent report we have added to the ACDC collection. “For every great project that changes how a community benefits from technology to improve the lives of its people, there seem to be twice at many projects that fail, and end up wasting time, money and maybe worst, goodwill.”

MobileActive.org staffers offer 10 suggestions in their “definitive guide to failure.” You can learn more about them here .

Country-city antagonisms revealed in country music . “A common theme prevails in country music that explores the antagonistic relationship between the country and the city,” John F. Stanislawski reports in a thesis we have added to the ACDC collection. A master’s degree candidate at the University of Illinois, Stanislawski analyzed songs from the subgenre of honky-tonk in terms of lyrical content, style and sound to learn how the rural-urban dichotomy has evolved. They included:

“Oh, how I want to go home”
“I sold the farm to take my woman where she longed to be”
“It ain’t nothin’ but a concrete jungle”
“Big city turn me loose and set me free”
“I’m going back to a better class of losers”
“Shuttin’ Detroit down”

The author observed that the current rural-versus-urban theme often tends to reflect an increasingly modern and urbanized world. “The larger implications of these analyses ultimately help us to understand what the ‘country’ is and stands for to country music culture.”

Read this thesis here via Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship (IDEALS).

Retail food marketers scrambling to serve shoppers using smartphones. How can a consumer roaming the supermarket aisles use her/his smartphone to check on products, prices, locations and other matters of interest within that store? Food marketers are scrambling to find ways to answer that question, according to a report we have added from Food Systems Insider. The report cites these findings from a recent survey by PriceGrabber.com among online customers:

• 53 percent own a smartphone
• 22 percent are using their phones to check prices
• 21 percent are using them to research products

You can read the news item, “Got milk?” here .

Congratulations to TEEAL at the 10th Anniversary . The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library (TEEAL) is observing 10 years of providing quality scientific content to support agricultural development in countries where it would not otherwise be affordable. This digital “agricultural library in a box,” provided through a program coordinated at Cornell University, is available to public sector and not-for-profit educational and research organizations in 100 of the lowest income countries.

Content includes about 2.5 million pages of full-text articles from more than 140 journals. They are stored on a 500 gigabyte external hard drive for use either in a stand-alone computer or local area network, with a searchable database of citations. Subscriptions are available at a fraction of the cost of individual subscriptions and include annual updates. TEEAL serves a special need because internet and broadband access often is limited in these countries.

You can learn more about the agricultural information services of TEEAL here .

Communicator activities approaching

August 26-29, 2010
Annual Conference of the National Market News Association in Portland, Oregon USA.
Information: Tiffany.Smit@ams.usda.gov

September 1-3, 2010
Annual Conference of the Association of Food Journalists in Santa Fe, New Mexico USA.
Information: http://www.afjonline.com

September 30-October 2, 2010
“Big land. Big sky. Big business.” Annual conference of the Canadian Farm Writers’ Federation in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.
Information: http://www.saskfarmwriters.ca

Reporting on impressive snake tracks. We close this issue of ACDC News with a J. Frank Dobie story that might impress any sharp-eyed agricultural journalist. Van Sickle appeared two hours late for a court summons, explaining to the judge that he was delayed by the track of a rattlesnake. “Your honor,” he insisted, “it is the most enormous track a man ever laid eyes on. The sight of it held me spellbound. I followed it in hopes of getting a glimpse of the snake that made it.”

“Ridiculous,” the judge replied in assessing a fine. But a lawyer and two other men expressed interest in seeing this enormous track. Van Sickle was delighted to take them several miles out of town to a sandy hillside near Ferber’s Branch. “Look at that,” he exclaimed. They weren’t impressed. “Why, that snake track is not wider than lots of snake tracks we have seen.”

“That may be true,” Van Sickle replied, “but, great goodness, look how long it is!”

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.

“Suddenly, we dig farming” is the title of a lively commentary we added recently to the ACDC collection. Writing in the Los Angeles Times , Meghan Daum surveyed current public passions such as:

• organic farmers as rock stars and heroes
• favorite farmer contests
• Internet social games such as Farmville, causing lost sleep over virtual crop rotation
• “Farmer wants a wife” reality dating show

Read it here .

PR not enough in a food recall. Most companies in the food supply chain have a Plan A for recalls, according to an executive cited in an article we entered recently from Food Logistics . That is, they assume they will never have a recall. Some companies have plans to “focus on preventive measures and on public relations approaches for brands under siege.” Few get around to what recall planning actually requires:

• Creating a detailed, written recall protocol plan
• Staging regular mock recalls to give everyone involved in a recall a chance to practice their rules

This article by Carol Casper reviews information technology systems that permit a company – presented with a single piece of data such as a purchase order – to identify the location or disposition of every affected product within minutes if not seconds. That’s a vital key to protecting consumers, and their trust, when recalls occur.

You can read the article here .

Mobile phones give voice to those the media seldom cover . A recent survey in India revealed that an estimated 2 percent of space in mainstream media involved rural people and activities. Access to Internet and private television is low there, as well. However, mobile penetration is high, and growing. So mobile telephones are helping rural residents talk to each other, and the outside world, about matters important to them, according to a BBC report we added recently to the ACDC collection. The report describes a platform by CGnet Swara that works like this:

• A “reporter” or “citizen journalist” listens to a local conversation about a topic of interest (e.g., issues in construction of a dam-like structure on a nearby river)
• The reporter calls a Bangalore number to upload a report of that discussion
• A text message goes out to all phone numbers on a contact list
• Anyone who wants to hear the news report calls in to the same number and listens to it, individually or in a group (by amplified phone setting).

You can read the report here .

“Industry lobbying keeps public in the dark about broadband,” reads the headline of a March report from the Investigative Reporting Workshop of American University. The report by John Dunbar says that since 1999 the largest broadband and wireless providers and their trade associations have spent $873 million lobbying. Part of that effort focuses on conflicting views about providing “public data that could help the nation determine the width and depth of the so-called digital divide.” Concerns involve deployment of broadband services to rural America and low-income areas.

Read the report here .

On creative media: Smell of barbecued steak – from a billboard . Bloom food stores, located in several states of the southeastern U.S., are using scented air technologies to “jump out and really grab the consumers’ attention.” A billboard along the highway features a juicy steak while a big fan blows pepper and charcoal smells toward the road to add a hickory barbecue smell to what the passersby see.

You can read several news reports about this food advertising experiment, including some reactions from consumers.

” Steak-scented billboard ”

” Billboard sells with smells ”

” Billboard emits smell of cooking steak ”

Encouraging employment outlook. Encouraging word for agricultural communicators comes from a new U. S. Department of Agriculture report on employment opportunities between 2010-2015. More than 6,200 annual job openings are expected in communications, education and governmental operations involved with agricultural and food systems, renewable resources and the environment. Among the priority occupations cited:

• Science communicators
• Food safety information specialists
• Ecotourism specialists
• Distance education specialists
• Computer graphics technicians

“Graduates who are highly skilled in using electronic media and have experiences in multimedia operations will be most competitive.”

Opportunities for public relations specialists in these areas of agriculture are expected to increase 24 percent during the coming five years while opportunities for technical writers are expected to increase 18 percent.

You can read the report here .

Hosting a Nuffield Scholar . We in ACDC were pleased to host 2010 Nuffield Scholar Caroline Stocks of the Farmers Weekly ( UK) during part of last week. The international Nuffield Scholar Program recognizes excellence and develops leadership in agriculture. Caroline is deputy news editor of Farmers Weekly . She is using her scholarship experience to learn how media and organizations around the world communicate with their farmers. Her current travels involve research in Canada and the U.S. Later, she plans to gather information in Australia, India and the Netherlands. This week, she scouted the ACDC collection for research and other information of interest. She also met with some agricultural journalists and producers in east-central Illinois.

Visitors welcomed. We are always pleased to host professionals, students, faculty members and others interested in agricultural journalism and communications. Let us know if ACDC can be a “home base” and “research center” when you or your associates are looking for new skills, case examples, perspectives and background resources about effective agricultural journalism and communications.

Communicator activities approaching

July 24-28, 2010
“Rolling on the River, AMS Style.” Ag Media Summit in St. Paul, Minnesota USA.
Information: http://www.agmediasummit.com

August 26-29, 2010
Annual Conference of the National Market News Association in Portland, Oregon USA.
Information: Tiffany.Smit@ams.usda.gov

September 1-3, 2010
Annual Conference of the Association of Food Journalists in Santa Fe, New Mexico USA.
Information: http://www.afjonline.com

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.