Ferraz de Oliveira Nicholas

Why rural communities should use social media to attract people to them. Mike Knutson of the ReimagineRural blog offered these reasons in a commentary we added recently to the ACDC collection:

1. Markets are conversations — more than one-way communications highlighted by advertising.
2. People look to the Internet when considering community, but generally don’t trust traditional community-based websites as much as information from their peers.
3. Online social networks help build face-to-face community.

You can read this commentary here .

Does the hard copy newsletter still have a place? V. L. Stone and K. L. Devenish asked that question during 2009 in evaluating a printed newsletter for farmers, farm consultants and agribusinesses in Western Australia. The newsletter provides extension information, seasonal prompts, local news and research advice to clients of the WA Department of Agriculture and Food. Responses from 113 participants in a seminar indicated:

• 77 percent said they prefer to receive the printed version rather than the electronic version by email.
• Readers often explained that they prefer a hard copy because they can take it anywhere for reading at any time.
• 20 percent said they had referred to it during the last 12 months.

Authors described the printed newsletter as “still a powerful way of communicating with farmers.” They also advocated catering to those who prefer it electronically.

You can read the Extension Farming Systems Journal article here .

When things go wrong . A book we reviewed recently for the ACDC collection, Conservation psychology: understanding and promoting human care for nature , included a section on coping with havoc. Authors Susan Clayton and Gene Myers cited the views of Viktor Frank, an existentialist psychologist and survivor of four concentration camps.

“We can always choose our attitude toward whatever happens,” they observed from his views, “even if we cannot affect what happens.” Heroism and humor are tools for “a self-detachment that allows us to choose our attitude toward our situation and ourselves.”

You have probably seen friends and others use both of those tools, heroism and humor. We recall an example of stoic humor expressed by rural Australians in the drought-prone Bush where conditions can get desperate:

“It always rains and spoils a good drought.”

Contact us at docctr@library.uiuc.edu if you have examples to share or would like further information about this book.

An update on Philippine Agricultural Journalists . We have added to the ACDC collection a news report about the Philippine Agricultural Journalists (PAJ), second oldest organization of journalists in that nation. The report appeared recently in the website of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ). Author Matilde Maunahan, PAJ vice-president for external affairs, explained that members include 231 agricultural editors and reporters from print and broadcast media, as well as information writers and officers of government and private agencies involved in agriculture.

The organization aims to:

• Unite and strengthen the agricultural journalism profession
• Contribute to agricultural development through dissemination of vital and relevant information
• Help improve the communication system for the agriculture and food industries in accordance with the ethics and standards of journalism
• Help create an atmosphere for better understanding among the stakeholders of agricultural development.

You can read the article on the IFAJ web site here .

Best ways for the food industry to reduce the risk of food-borne illness. A representative sample of U. S. consumers who were surveyed during early July by Thomson Reuters offered these suggestions:

• Better quality controls (37 percent)
• More inspections (21 percent)
• Better consumer education (20 percent)
• Increased Food and Drug Administration oversight (12 percent)
• Stiffer penalties (12 percent)

One-tenth of the 3,016 respondents said they were made sick by something they ate during the past six months.

You can review a summary of results here .

Communicator activities approaching

• November 10-12, 2010
  “Beyond the microphone.” Sixty-sixth annual conference of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting (NAFB) in Kansas City, Missouri. Information: www.nafb.com
• November 23-24, 2010
  “Public Relations 2020, the German Agriculture.” This celebration of 50 years of information.medien.agrar.e.V. (IMA) will take place in Berlin. The German Association of Agricultural Journalists is co-organizer. The program includes perceptions and expectations of people on the land, journalists, textbook publishers, electronic media and the press. Information: www.vdaj.de
• November 26, 2010
  “End of Year Double Act.” A special program for members of the Rural Press Club of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Information: http://www.ruralpressclub.com.au

Bad outdoor writing earns top honors. As you might guess, we are referring to honors in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. This annual contest, sponsored by the English Department of San Jose State University (California), “challenges writers around the world to compose the opening sentence of the worst of all possible novels.” Scott Davis Jones of Valley Village, California, entered this 2010 winner in the “Purple Prose” category:

“The dark, drafty old house was lopsided and decrepit, leaning in on itself, the way an aging possum carrying a very heavy, overcooked drumstick in its mouth might list to one side if he were also favoring a torn Achilles tendon, assuming possums have them.”

You can read other 2010 Bulwer-Lytton winning entries here .

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.

How media attention to animal welfare influences meat demand . We have added to the ACDC collection a September 2010 report from Kansas State University by agricultural economists Glynn Tonsor and Nicole Olynk. Their 1999-2008 analysis of this subject revealed findings such as these:

• As a whole, media attention to animal welfare has significant, negative effects on U.S. meat demand.
• Direct effects of media attention are primarily associated with demand for pork and poultry.
• Increasing media attention to animal welfare issues triggers consumers to purchase less meat rather than reallocate expenditures across competing meats.

You can read this research report here .

Rural reading group is attracting new radio listeners. The International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ) website features an innovative program that is attracting new listeners and readers. Leigh Radford, national editor of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation rural reporting unit, reports on the Bush Telegraph Reading Group. It features classic novels set in rural and regional Australia. The author describes the purpose of the Reading Group, how it began, how it operates and how it engages listeners before, during and after each aired program.

You can visit a feature website where audience members can listen to each program and find out which book is coming up.

Improving information on organics . That was the title of a set of presentations earlier this year at Agricultural Outlook Forum 2010, sponsored by the U. S. Department of Agriculture. You can read them here:

” USDA Market News Service: current reports and future initiatives ” by Michael Sheats, Chief of the Poultry Market News and Analysis Branch, USDA.

” Sustainable Agriculture: The Key to Health & Prosperity ” by Christine Bushway, Executive Director of the Organic Trade Association.

” Information needs from a producer’s perspective ” by Ron Strochlic of the California Institute for Rural Studies.

Welcome to a new faculty associate.

It’s a special pleasure to welcome Dr. Katie Abrams as an agricultural communications faculty member and ACDC associate here at the University of Illinois. With a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Agricultural Education and Communication, University of Florida, Dr. Abrams brings excellent experience to the Agricultural Communications program.

An undergraduate degree in agricultural communications from Purdue University launched her career. She served as a national officer of Agricultural Communicators of Tomorrow (ACT). Since then she has gained professional experience in newspaper reporting, magazine editing and design, and Web development and management. She was on the team that helped re-brand and market Florida Cooperative Extension.

Dr. Abrams has taught agricultural communication courses since 2007 and earned national honors for her research. It focuses on four broad areas: (1) interest group communications, (2) Web 2.0 and social media, (3) sensemaking and (4) the news media. Her dissertation research examined how environmental and animal welfare messages affected attitudes and intention to vote on an animal welfare policy.

“We have scarcely begun properly to harness human communication capacity that lies within our resources . ” That is not a current call for using the new social media. Instead, it dates back more than 40 years. Recently we found it in a 1969 speech by Erskine Childers of the United Nations Development Programme. Leader of the UNDP Development Support Communication Service for Asia and the Pacific, he emphasized an enduring theme. That is, new means of communicating outpace our ability to use them well.

He asked in 1969, “Why have we scarcely begun to use transistor radios for development support communication?” Also, he noted that millions of people were able to sit in front of television sets – even deep in the rural areas in some countries – and watch a man step onto the moon. “Yet most of the same millions of people, that same day, had been denied the information they needed…”

Get in touch with us at docctr@library.uiuc.edu if you would like to read this speech, which we added recently to the ACDC collection.

Communicator activities approaching

• October 31, 2010
  Deadline for submitting paper and poster proposals for the Association for International Agricultural and Extension Education (AIAEE) annual conference. It takes place with the 2011 World Conference on Sustainable Value Chain Agriculture for Food Security and International Development, July 3-7, 2011, in Windhoek, Namibia. Information: www.aiaee.org
• November 5-9, 2010
  “Science writers 2010.” Joint gathering of the National Association of Science Writers and the Council for the Development of Science Writers in New Haven, Connecticut. Information: http://www.nasw.org/meeting/index.htm
• November 10-12, 2010
  “Beyond the microphone.” Sixty-sixth annual conference of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting (NAFB) in Kansas City, Missouri. Information: www.nafb.com

Rapping online for dairy promotion. Yeo Valley Farms in England is using a video rap campaign designed to brand a line of organic yogurt, milk, creams, butter and other dairy products. Viewers of the ads are almost assured of learning how to pronounce ” Yeo Valley” after hearing and watching the young presenters rap in milking and machine sheds, near a farmstead and in pastures with Holsteins grazing nearby.

You can view the two-minute Yeo Valley rap advertisement on YouTube here .

Get behind-the-scenes information about the campaign here .

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.

New web-based curriculum about farm broadcasting. A new 12-chapter curriculum is available, thanks to agricultural communications faculty members at Texas Tech University with support from the National Association of Farm Broadcasting Foundation. Topics include farm broadcasting history, the role of a farm broadcaster, basic radio facts, promotions, writing for radio, farmer demographics and media use, advertising, farm media research studies, preparing a media plan and farm radio media buys.

This resource is available for use in communications courses and other venues. Each chapter includes learning objectives, reading materials and Power Point lecture slides. Most chapters have a video to accompany the reading material.

Everything is contained on this web site: http://www.depts.ttu.edu/aged/nafb_website

For further information, get in touch with Prof. Erica Irlbeck at erica.irlbeck@ttu.edu

When brands become virtuous . Research findings that we have added from Context Marketing and Noesis Research suggest that brands are considered virtuous by both being good and doing good. “Consumers do not differentiate between a brand’s being good and doing good when assessing brand virtue.”

Among other insights from the reported research:

• Virtuous brands engage consumers in ways that matter most to marketers, in building trust and loyalty.
• Care for the environment is one of the most valued qualifications of a responsible brand.
• Virtuous brands allow consumers to feel better about themselves.
• Consumers will pay more for virtuous brands.
• Women hold brands to higher standards than do men.

You can read the research report, “Brand virtue,” here .

How rural residents use the Internet to learn about local activities. Qualitative and quantitative research led Michael J. Stern and Alison E. Adams to observe in a recent issue of American Behavioral Scientist :

• Many rural residents know little about local community Web sites and feel it is difficult to find information about local happenings.
• However, some use the Web to learn about local events and groups (bonding) and these are the same people who connect to interests outside the local area (bridging).
• The Internet seems a useful tool for activating the active.
• E-mail use appeared to be more prominent than Web sites for finding out about local and nonlocal events and groups.

You can review the abstract and order the article in full text from the journal publisher here .

An innovative Extension approach serves small landholders . An “experiential learning journey” is showing promise in Australia for meeting the unique extension and information needs of small landowners. This model is described in a presentation we have added to the ACDC collection from a 2010 webinar hosted by the Australasia Pacific Extension Network.

More than 5,000 participants during the past five years have taken part in about 150 workshops used to introduce a five-stage experiential model that employs varied Extension methods. Staff members of the Western Australia Small Landholder Information Service reported that 90 percent of sampled participants in the 2007-2008 program said they used new behaviors that they could attribute to their engagement with the program.

You can review the model and read the research report here .

Tribute to a master agricultural communicator . At the recent passing of Lyle Abbott (age 92) we are pleased to help recognize the contributions of one of the master agricultural marketing communicators in the U.S. During the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, he worked with agricultural advertising agencies that helped major clients address a dynamic time of agricultural development in the U.S. For example, at Gardner Advertising, St. Louis, Missouri, he led teams that served clients such as John Deere, Ralston Purina, Eli Lilly and Northrup King Seed.

His many professional contributions included serving on the original Industry Advisory Committee when the Agricultural Communications program was established here at the University of Illinois in the early 1960s. His counsel helped define the direction and values of this program. We are grateful for his service, his example and his friendship.

Fired from city council because of Farmville: the perils of social gaming. Plovidv city council members ( Bulgaria) voted off a member they caught playing Farmville during a council meeting. Gavin Dunaway reported that news in a recent issue of the interactive advertising journal, Adotas .

“Farmville still has that new-fad thrill to it that will fade, but social gaming is certainly now a component of this digital life,” Dunaway observed. He said opportunities in social gaming are abundant, but urged advertisers to discover sustainable and smart ways to engage gamers – beyond trying to take advantage of addiction/obsession.

You can read this commentary here .

Communicator activities approaching

• November 5-9, 2010
  “Science writers 2010.” Joint gathering of the National Association of Science Writers and the Council for the Development of Science Writers in New Haven, Connecticut. Information: http://www.nasw.org/meeting/index.htm
• November 10-12, 2010
  “Beyond the microphone.” Sixty-sixth annual conference of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting (NAFB) in Kansas City, Missouri. Information: www.nafb.com

Best of the worst crop reporting . Once again, we are forced say that agricultural themes appeared in winning entries of the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. This contest, sponsored by the English Department of San Jose State University (California), “challenges writers around the world to compose the opening sentence of the worst of all possible novels.” Rich Cheeseman of Waconia, Minnesota, entered this 2010 winner in the “Fantasy Fiction” category:

“The wood nymph fairies blissfully pranced in the morning light past the glistening dewdrops on the meadow thistles by the Old Mill, ignorant of the daily slaughter that occurred just behind its lichen-encrusted walls, twin 20-ton mill stones savagely ripping apart the husks of wheat seed, gleefully smearing the starchy entrails across their dour granite faces in unspeakable botanical horror and carnage — but that’s not our story; ours is about fairies!”

For added inspiration, you can read all the winning 2010 Bulwer-Lytton entries here .

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.

Putting faces on dairy farming . A commentary we added recently from CattleNetwork.com explained how the California Milk Advisory Board is taking steps to “show consumers the real lives of California dairy farmers.” Television commercials feature varied perspectives such as:

• A 5th generation dairy youngster who shows cows with his sisters
• A “Dairy Lady” who did not grow up on a farm but married into it and has grown to love dairying
• A young dairy couple that wants to put the “culture” back into “agriculture”

You can read the commentary here .

Eight new agricultural communications research papers. Here are the authors and titles of eight research papers presented at the 2010 conference of the International Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Life and Human Sciences (ACE) in St. Louis, Missouri. Check with identified authors about gaining access to papers of interest to you.

Karen Cannon and Angie Lindsey, “Critical issues: understanding the challenges facing Florida’s agricultural and natural resources sectors as perceived by identified opinion leaders.” Contact: karenjcannon@ufl.edu

Courtney Meyers and Tracy Irani, “Examining the influence of message framing: a comparison of agricultural and science communicators’ attitudes toward agricultural biotechnology information.” Contact: courtney.meyers@ttu.edu

Erica Irlbeck, Cindy Akers, Matt Baker, Mindy Brashears, Scott Burris and Lee Duemer, “A case study and framing analysis of the 2008 salmonella outbreak.” Contact: erica.irlbeck@ttu.edu

Erica Irlbeck, Cindy Akers and Ashley Palmer, “A nutty study: a framing analysis of the 2009 salmonella outbreak in peanut products.” Contact: erica.irlbeck@ttu.edu

Jason Ellis, B. Lynn Gordon and Lana Johnson, “Using data to inform a home horticultural web site redesign process.” Contact: jellis2@unl.edu

Allyson McGuire, Leslie Edgar and Don Edgar, “A philosophical view of teaching and learning in the digital world with an application base for Second Life.” Contact: leslie.edgar@simplot.com

Kori Dunn, Cindy Akers, Courtney Meyers and Todd Chambers, “Usability testing and evaluation of (university) sorghum research initiative web site.” Contact: kori.a.dunn@ttu.edu

Dru Glaze, Leslie Edgar, Tracy Rutherford and Emily Rhoades, “Visual communications: an analysis of university students’ perceptions of rural America based on select photographs.” Contact: cglaze@uark.edu

“A win-win model for facing activist pressure.” We recently added to the ACDC collection two case studies in which researcher Adrienne Cooper reported how two-way communicating influenced outcomes when Greenpeace, McDonald’s and Unilever interacted. The author concluded:

“Both cases provide examples of L. Grunig’s (1992) theory that two-way symmetrical communication is the best way to create a win-win situation when responding to activist publics.”

You can read the report here .

Tips on covering fall harvest in a record hot year. Melissa Preddy recently offered on the National Center for Business Journalism web site some advice for business reporters about covering the approaching fall harvest season. She suggested news angles (such as weather records; effects on local producers, agribusinesses, the food trade, retail prices; status of harvest progress) and varied sources for information.

You can read the article here .

Persistent rural-urban divide in online health searching. A 2010 article in the American Behavioral Scientist reports on rural-urban differences in factors associated with using the Internet for general and health-related purposes. Authors found the gap associated with educational level, income and diffusion of broadband.

You can review the abstract and order the article in full text from the journal publisher here .

Welcome to a new ACDC associate.

It is a special pleasure to introduce Gemma Petrie, new staff member in the Center. Her appointment as a half-time graduate assistant began August 16 as she enters the master’s degree program in Library and Information Science here at the University of Illinois.

A philosophy graduate from Reed College, Portland, Oregon, Gemma brings to the Center an excellent combination of experiences and skills. They include coordination of development activities (Onward Neighborhood House, Chicago) and publications (University of Chicago); extensive experience with computers, web sites and software; professional writing and editing – and special interest and expertise in foods. Gemma commented that she is, “Excited for this opportunity to combine my interests in food and special collections. I look forward to working with the ACDC staff to add documents to the Center, update the website and improve the database system this year.”

Communicator activities approaching

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

October 1, 2010
Deadline for papers to be presented in the 2011 Agricultural Communications Section of the Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists conference, Corpus Christi, Texas, February 5-8, 2011. Two categories – research papers and professional papers – are invited.
Information: http://agnews.tamu.edu/saas/ Click on “Call for Papers for 2011 Meeting.”

November 5-9, 2010
“Science writers 2010.” Joint gathering of the National Association of Science Writers and the Council for the Development of Science Writers in New Haven, Connecticut. Information: http://www.nasw.org/meeting/index.htm

November 10-12, 2010
“Beyond the microphone.” Sixty-sixth annual conference of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting (NAFB) in Kansas City, Missouri.
Information: www.nafb.com

Croc art and brumbies on the bolt. We appreciated learning recently about the creative photographs, paintings and sculptures of Wayne Miles and Peter Torr in the Northern Territory of Australia. You can see some dramatic images in sections such as these of their web site:

• “Croc art”
• ” Buffalo bull”
• “Thunder in the tropics”
• “Flying foxes twilight”
• “Brumbies on the bolt”

Visit their web site here .

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.

New survey: How U. S. farmers and ranchers gather information. We recently added to the ACDC collection a summary of findings from a 2010 survey of media use among more than 1,200 owners, operators and/or managers of farms or ranches in the U. S. The survey, conducted by Readex Research through support from ABM Agri Council, analyzed producers’ use of 14 media channels. The channels ranged broadly across dealers, farm shows, meetings, agricultural periodicals, agricultural radio/television programs, newspapers and digital, mobile and other media.

You can view a presentation that summarizes methods and results here .

No need for badmouthing other parts of the industry. “We’ve all seen these kinds of statements,” said John Maday of Drovers in a commentary we added recently to the ACDC collection:

• “Our beef isn’t pumped full of antibiotics and hormones like all that other stuff.”
• “Our milk comes from happy cows, not the ones raised in torturous, polluting factories.”

“It doesn’t need to be that way,” he suggested. “Today’s consumers want choices, and some are willing to pay premiums for attributes that help them feel better about their food purchases. … So if consumers want brown eggs, sell them brown eggs. But market them as brown eggs, not anti-white eggs.”

You can read this commentary here

Differences in how rural and urban residents use social media. Rural people articulate far fewer friends online, according to results of a study reported recently by researchers Eric Gilbert, Karrie Karahalios and Christian Sandvig. Also, those friends live much closer to home than do the online friends of urban residents.

In addition, results indicate that “the groups have substantially different gender distributions and use privacy features differently.”

You can review the research paper here .

Only four uses for the telephone . ACDC contributor John Behrens has a revealing experience to share about how his farm family members used their hand-crank telephone when he was a youngster on the Illinois prairies during the 1920s.

“Our telephone had only four uses,” he explains.

• Calling the doctor
• Calling the vet
• Calling “Fire!”
• Calling Grandpa about when to cut hay

Please alert us at docctr@library.uiuc.edu if you recall – or know of – other early experiences with telephones when they came to farm homes.

Caution about promoting agricultural entrepreneurship . C. C. de Lauwere raised a caution flag in a new book, Ethical futures: bioscience and food horizons. Citing results of research among pig and dairy farmers in the Netherlands, de Lauwere reported that agricultural entrepreneurs do not automatically contribute to ecological sustainability – people, planet and profit.

The author suggested that policy makers who think they can stimulate sustainable agriculture by promoting agricultural entrepreneurship should be aware of this.

Contact us at docctr@library.uiuc.edu if you would like further information about this report.

Those free farm caps – keeping brands secure. An article in Adotas , journal of interactive advertising, used farm tractor caps as an example of forging long-term relationships and “keeping brands secure in insecure times.”

Author Ernie Mosteller asked: “How is the tractor hat different from giving a customer a branded digital…something that makes their life just a bit easier and connects them with your brand? Not much, in my opinion.”

You can read this article here .

Thanks and best wishes to Anna Pederson , valued associate in the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, as she completes her graduate studies this summer. During the past three years Anna has served as half-time graduate assistant in the Center while she studied in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. An honors graduate in English from the University of Maine, Anna came here in August 2007 with five years of experience working in academic and public libraries. Among the many ways in which she contributed, she:

• served as webmaster of the ACDC site and enhanced the features of it
• identified and processed hundreds of documents into the collection
• carried out customized searches and provided documents to users
• completed a resource for orienting new personnel to procedures in the Center

Communicator activities approaching

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

October 1, 2010
Deadline for papers to be presented in the 2011 Agricultural Communications Section of the Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists conference, Corpus Christi, Texas, February 5-8, 2011. Two categories – research papers and professional papers – are invited.
Information: http://agnews.tamu.edu/saas/ Click on “Call for Papers for 2011 Meeting.”

November 5-9, 2010
“Science writers 2010.” Joint gathering of the National Association of Science Writers and the Council for the Development of Science Writers in New Haven, Connecticut.
Information: http://www.nasw.org/meeting/index.htm

November 10-12, 2010
“Beyond the microphone.” Sixty-sixth annual conference of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting (NAFB) in Kansas City, Missouri.
Information: www.nafb.com

The smells of barbecued steak from a billboard. T hat’s nothing. Thanks to ACDC contributor Don Schwartz for calling our attention to place-based food marketing tools that are even more creative than the billboard we mentioned recently in ACDC News. He passes along word that’s on the Web about a grocery store with impressive features such as these:

• An automatic water mister in the produce section is accompanied by the distant sound of thunder and the smell of fresh rain.
• In the meat department there is the aroma of charcoal grilled steaks and brats.
• When you pass the milk cases, you hear cows mooing and smell fresh-cut hay.
• As you approach the egg case, you hear hens cluck and cackle. The air is filled with a pleasing aroma of bacon and eggs frying.

Have you shopped there yet?

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.

“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.

How to build trust in agri-food chains. Christian Fischer of Massey University, New Zealand, recently reported that communications came into the spotlight through surveys in six European countries. Reporting at the 2009 International Association of Agricultural Economists Conference in China, Fischer said he found that effective communications and a positive collaborative experience can significantly improve trust throughout those agri-food chains. Communications “seems to have an immediate impact on trust formation. Moreover, it has been found to be a powerful mediator…”

Personal bonds did not show an impact on trust levels in all situations he observed, Fischer reported. However, they are important when dealing with farmers.

Read this research paper here .

Oh, for the marketer to know the emotions of potential customers . Are these prospective buyers in a social frame of mind? A sentimental frame of mind? Do they want to sustain local agriculture? Do they feel respected? It can make a big difference in what the marketer might say to them, of course. Evidence appeared in results of a recent study reported in the journal, Psychology and Marketing . Researchers at the Universidad Publica de Navarra, Spain, investigated this matter in the wine market.

“…suppliers need to give much greater consideration to consumers’ self-awareness,” they concluded.

Citation title: Using emotional benefits as a differentiation strategy
Contact the publisher at cs-journals@wiley.com or get in touch with us at docctr@library.uiuc.edu for help in gaining access.

Rural radio “squealing into town.” A 2005 article in the San Francisco Chronicle came to our attention recently, featuring a radio station that is new to us. The logo for KPIG-FM, Freedom, California, features a pig wearing sunglasses and doffing a cowboy hat. Reporter Maria Alicia Gaura explained that “The Pig has been a cultural staple of Santa Cruz County since 1988, amusing its intensely loyal audience with a freewheeling format and an endless barrage of pig, pork and swine-themed puns.”

A Wikipedia account emphasizes the local approach of this station: local disc jockeys, sponsors, news and commentary, a free community call-in line for leaving recorded announcements, in-studio live music shows, music festivals and more. The format tends to be folk, country/folk, rock, blues, “and is largely self determined.”

You can read the Chronicle article here .

Why not talk about our failures? MobileActive.org, a global network of people using mobile technology for social impact, has been asking that question. In fact, during April it organized the first ever “FailFaire,” where several brave souls reported on failed efforts to use information technologies for development. Case examples included:

• A project to recycle old cell phones and donate them to Africa
• A project to help power low cost lighting to the rural poor
• A UNICEF project to collect 5 million children’s stories

We have added Ian Thorpe’s report of the occasion to the ACDC collection. It describes the occasion, considers the importance of reviewing mistakes and offers six tips on organizing a learning-from-mistakes occasion.

You can read the report here .

New help for using the ACDC collection. You can now view three new tutorials that help you identify and gain access to information in the ACDC collection. Users often remark about how much information is in the collection when they dig into it. The breadth and depth of it often surprise users (and us). So during recent months ACDC Associate Karlie Elliott Bowman has produced three tutorials to help you “learn the ropes” in using the ACDC collection. They are now posted on the ACDC web site, linked from the home page.

Tutorial 1 – “Introduction” to finding useful information. What this unique collection includes, in terms of “agricultural communications.” (2:23)

Tutorial 2 – “Beginning your search.” How to use the “Search for a Document” system, with special emphasis on searching the collection by topic or subject. (8:17)

Tutorial 3 – “How to retrieve documents.” Some of the new documents are available from the Center in full-text digital format. Many are not, of course. This tutorial suggests ways to gain access to whatever document you identify through your search of the ACDC collection. (6:36)

Case example – translating technical language into public language. We have a suggestion if you want to see an example of rigor one can use in this process. The case report appears in an article published in Ecology and Society . Authors identified steps in developing common-language indicators, as related to technical environmental concepts. For instance, how can one translate an environmental indicator, such as “dendrochemistry” or “root ecology” into a common-language indicator?

You can see a fascinating and valuable process here .

Thanks and best wishes to Laura Huston , a graduating senior and part-time assistant in the Center during this school year. Laura was graduated last month with a major in agricultural communications, including an emphasis in advertising and informatics. A native of Roseville, Illinois, she earned her Associate in Arts degree (with honors) from John Wood Community College in 2007. Laura has seen plenty of agricultural communications literature while helping process documents into the ACDC collection. We are grateful for her dedication and assistance.

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

Interesting word of the month . We close this issue of ACDC News with one of those “What’s this?” words. It caught our eye in a commentary by Diana Sheets about journalism in the age of the Internet. She concluded:

“At best, journalism provides us with an inspired narrative based on verifiable evidence that transforms our understanding of events or ideas. At worst, journalism degrades from news into gossip or propaganda or advertising, threatening to confer little more than the stench of our cultural detritus.”

It’s worth looking up in the dictionary or Wikipedia – and, yes, it has agricultural connections.

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.

Winning Pulitzer Prizes on the agrifood beat . Food, land use and rural music were among the topics addressed by some of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize winning journalists who were recognized recently. Winners included:

• Michael Moss and members of the New York Times staff for “relentless reporting on contaminated hamburger and other food safety issues that, in print and online, spotlighted defects in federal regulation and led to improved practices.” (explanatory reporting)
• Bristol (VA) Herald Courier for the work of Daniel Gilbert in “illuminating the murky mismanagement of natural-gas royalties owed to thousands of land owners in southwest Virginia, spurring remedial action by state lawmakers.” (public service reporting)
• Hank Williams, honored posthumously for his “craftsmanship as a songwriter who expressed universal feelings with a poignant simplicity and played a pivotal role in transforming country music into a major musical and cultural force in American life.” (special citation)

You can learn more about these and other Pulitzer Prize winners here .

Extension services and sticky knowledge. “In the context of providing extension services for farming communities, knowledge transfer is inherently ‘sticky’.” That is how authors put it in a 2009 issue of the Extension Farming Systems Journal . They said the stickiness was due to:

• Number of stakeholders involved
• Complexity of farming practices
• Uncertainty relating to seasonal patterns and market signals

“Those involved in knowledge transfer processes require a highly competent understanding of not only the technical issues, but also the social processes involving multiple network stakeholders.”

You may have come across the term “sticky knowledge” in descriptions of moving information – and being aware of information – within organizations. It is used as a conceptual model based on integration of communication theory and knowledge transfer.

You can read an agricultural application of it here .

“Top Ten Tips” for entering agricultural communications. What does it take to find challenging work you feel passionate about doing as a professional communicator in agriculture? Lisa Cassady Jayne, senior account executive of Osborn & Barr Communications, shared her “Top Ten Tips” recently with agricultural communications students from the University of Illinois. These members of Agricultural Communicators of Tomorrow (ACT) visited the firm in St. Louis, Missouri, during April to learn more about the career field they are preparing to enter.

Thanks to Lisa for her thoughtful career suggestions. You can read them here .

Agricultural journalism has never been more relevant. Mike Wilson, president of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists, emphasized that point during an interview with Chuck Zimmerman of ZimmComm New Media following the recent IFAJ Congress in Belgium. Reviewing the state of agricultural journalism around the world, he pointed to some of the driving forces for continued growth in this field, and in agricultural communications more broadly:

• Food production needs to double, globally, in the next 40 years
• More than half of that added production will come from “developing” countries
• Effective journalism and communications will be central to success of the mission

At the same time, he said, the work of agricultural journalists, internationally, is challenged by a trend toward fewer countries that provide freedom of the press.

Gaining their MBAs (Masters of Beef Advocacy) . Cindy Zimmerman of ZimmComm New Media recently interviewed several University of Missouri students and their instructor who had earned these special MBAs. Some 50 students completed six learning modules through a consumer information initiative of the Missouri Beef Council.

You can listen to the interview (4:55) here .

Past the 35,000 mark . Graduate Assistant Anna Pederson passes along the good news that the ACDC collection now contains more 35,000 documents. Thanks to all who have generously contributed documents, leads and encouragement to make this milestone possible. Most exciting is the fact that we are only scratching the surface of literature about the communications aspects of agriculture.

Welcome to a new ACDC associate . We are delighted to welcome Professor Joyce Wright as the new head of the Center within the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences Library. Her part-time appointment began on May 3. An Associate Professor of Library Administration, Joyce brings to the Center 25 years of experience in the University of Illinois Library. They include 13 years as head of the Undergraduate Library, assistant undergraduate librarian for Reference and Instructional Services and acting head of the Information Resource Retrieval Center and Library Advancement. All of these experiences will help her contribute to the global ACDC mission.

“I am excited about working in the field of agriculture,” Joyce reports, “and I look forward to introducing the Center to the academic and professional community through various outreach programs and services.”

Communicator activities approaching

June 17-19, 2010
40th Anniversary Seminar, American Horse Publications in Lexington, Kentucky USA.
Information: http://www.americanhorsepubs.org

June 22-26, 2010
60th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association in Singapore.
Information: http://www.icahdq.org

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

Attention, writers with innovative ideas about food progress in Africa . The National Peace Corps Association (NPCA) and World Policy Journal have launched an essay contest with that goal in mind. They invite essays that help “identify the most innovative solutions to the problem of food insecurity in the rural regions of Africa.” Essays can focus on ideas for African governments, private organizations or individuals in the international community. Recognized entries will be featured in the Journal or on websites of these partnering organizations. Entries are due by July 31.

See further information at http://www.AfricaRuralConnect.org/EssayContest

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.