Ferraz de Oliveira Nicholas – Page 14 – Funk Library

ACDC News – Issue 09-11

Posted on June 1, 2009 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

It’s more than link rot. How about data rot? Thanks to Paul Hixson for introducing that broader question in response to our ACDC News item about the ephemeral nature of live links to agricultural information on the Internet. He alerted us to two recent reports from David Pogue, one in the New York Times and one on CBS Television:

Pogue’s reports examine two aspects of data rot. One involves problems with the medium on which the information is stored (e.g., storage conditions). The other involves obsolescence of storage platforms (e.g., wire recorders and 8-track tape players).

What’s to be done? “…it’s something you have to take responsibility for yourself. No one is going to do it for you,” suggested one of Pogue’s resource specialists.

Farmer-to-farmer video – better than workshops in sparking innovation. A 2009 report in the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability concluded that “farmer-to-farmer video has great potential to enhance sustainable agriculture by encouraging local innovations.” Researchers reported these findings from a study among 200 women farmers in central Benin:

About 92% of those who viewed farmer-to-farmer learning videos and took part in hands-on training workshops developed creative solutions to rice processing based on improved parboiling methods.
72% of those who learned only through video did so.
19% of those who learned through workshops did so.

Thanks to Catherine Mgendi of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) for calling our attention to this report. Other materials in the ACDC collection confirm that implications extend beyond the settings of studies such as this.

Read a summary at: http://www.warda.org/warda/newsrel-videopower-jun09.asp

Food shoppers bombarded and bamboozled. We recently added to the ACDC collection a research summary that raises a caution flag about information overload. Joanne Denney-finch, chief executive of IGD, United Kingdom, reported: “Shoppers tell us they are being bombarded by a variety of issues, day-in, day-out from a variety of sources…and they say that too much information bamboozles them.”

According to reported research findings,” only 21% are very confident that they understand all the information they receive about food, while 19% don’t mind how much information they get – because they usually ignore it anyway.”

Citation: Information overload is industry opportunity
Posted at http://www.igd.com/index.asp?id=1&fid=6&sid=25&tid=90&folid=0&cid=203

Part 3. Preparing agricultural journalists/communicators for the 21st Century.

Here are suggestions from Douglas Starr, professor of agricultural journalism at Texas A&M University, about how to design an undergraduate agricultural journalism/communications program for the 21st Century:

“Today’s agricultural journalism/communications students need a Collegiate dictionary, a grammar book and an Associated Press Stylebook, and they need to learn how to use each…”
Know, be aware of and be knowledgeable about officials and news sources in various fields of agriculture.
“I strongly advocate [education in communication theory and research] because it will stand them in good stead regardless of where their careers take them.”
“With the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web, Ag Comm students should know how to write a second-day story because the Web page gets the first story.”

Read more of Professor Starr’s suggestions and reasons he offers for emphasizing them.

Students produce winning rural-urban videos . You can view three honored videos that college students produced recently to clarify how our food gets from the farm to the dinner table. These videos topped the Alpharma Ag Student Video Contest sponsored by Alpharma Animal Health:

“OatS” Produced by a team from the University of Wisconsin-Madison
“Today’s Agriculture” Produced by a team from the University of Florida
“Beef: Our Priority” Produced by a team from the University of Arizona

Posted at: http://www.meetwhatyoueat.com/winners.aspx

Lots of mid-year communicator activities

June 25-27, 2009
“Free rein in the Big Easy.” Annual seminar of the American Horse Publishers (AHP) organization in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Information: www.americanhorsepubs.org/programs/seminars/index.asp

July 31-August 4, 2009
2009 Congress of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ) in conjunction with the Agricultural Media Summit in Fort Worth, Texas USA.
Information: www.ifaj.org

August 1-5, 2009
“Saddle up, catch the cowboy spirit.” Agricultural Media Summit in Fort Worth, Texas USA. Joint meeting of Livestock Publications Council (LPC), American Agricultural Editors’ Association (AAEA), International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ), Livestock Publications Council (LPC) and the National Association of Agricultural Communicators of Tomorrow (ACT).
Information: www.agmediasummit.org

August 23-27, 2009
“Worldwide trends in open access to agricultural information.” Agricultural libraries discussion group at the World Library and Information Congress, Milan, Italy.
Information: http://www.ifla.org/annual-conference/ifla75/call-agricultural-en.htm

August 26-28, 2009
“Information and communication technologies for sustainable development.” 4th World IT Forum in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Information: http://iaald.blogspot.com/2008/11/world-it-forum-2009.html

Yes, a new winner in agricultural fiction. We have been delinquent in reviewing results of the 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. You may recall it as an international literary parody contest hosted by the Department of English and Comparative Literature at San Jose State University. The goal of the contest is “childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels.”

So get ready. Here is the runner-up entry in the “Vile Puns” category. Michael L. VanBlaricum of Santa Barbara, California, entered it:

“The Jones family held their annual family reunion on Easter going through over six dozen spiral-cut, hickory-smoked hams and several bottles of a fine Australian shiraz, before Farmer Jones, the head of the family, took the leavings back to Manor Farm to slop Napoleon and his other champion hogs but the seventy-six ham bones fed the pig’s tirade.”

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.

ACDC News – Issue 09-10

Posted on May 15, 2009 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

More bloggers (including scientists). What about science journalism? Results of a recent Nature News Survey among hundreds of science reporters track the decline of science reporting in mass media. “Supplanting the old media?” is the title of a Nature article, illustrated by a tangle of USB and laptop cords and cables. It highlighted:

Traditional media shedding full-time science journalists
Growing workloads of remaining science journalists
Greater reliance on the public relations departments of scientific organizations
More bloggers, including an increasing number of scientists
New and diverse employment opportunities for science communicators in government agencies, universities, museums, nongovernmental organizations and other venues
Need to “invent new sources of independently certified fact.”

Posted at http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090318/full/458274a.html

New course: Women impacting agricultural communication . Students at Texas A&M University enrolled last fall in a new course focusing on women professionals in agricultural journalism and communication. Teachers Tracy Rutherford and Rebecca McGovney-Ingram planned and taught it as part of a senior seminar. “The course went splendidly,” they report. It featured two areas of focus:

Women who have pioneered and contributed as professional agricultural journalists and communicators, across the decades and in various parts of the career field. Students conducted research and made individual contacts.
Discussion about what it means to be female in this work environment.

A poster describing the course has been added to the ACDC collection.

Contacts: Prof. Tracy Rutherford at trutherford@aged.tamu.edu or Rebecca McGovney-Ingram at rmcgovney-ingram@aged.tamu.edu

Part 2. Preparing agricultural journalists/communicators for the 21st Century.

Here are suggestions from Wayne Swegle, past president and an honorary member of the American Agricultural Editors’ Association, about how to design an undergraduate agricultural journalism/communications program for the 21st Century:

The art of simple writing. “I think…communicating in an easily understood fashion, even in story-telling ways, is still in vogue and important in conveying ideas.”
Greater understanding of some of the basic laws/rules of economics, as related to agriculture.
“Maybe a little dab [of communications theory and research] wouldn’t hurt anything” at the undergraduate level. “I used to say that ‘If you award a PhD to a journalist, you’ve ruined her/him for useful work.’ … Since then, I’ve been disabused of that thinking, of course.”

Read more of Wayne’s suggestions and reasons he offers for emphasizing them.

104th anniversary of the Danish Guild of Agricultural Journalists . On June 5 the Danish Guild will observe its 104th birthday. This special occasion reminds us of poignant comments made by Torsten Buhl in a jubilee speech of 2005.

“It is our ambition to continue as an important and respected forum of exchanging knowledge and information within food and agriculture, just as the guild has been for 100 years. However, we must continue to combine this exchange of information with critical questions – remembering that sustainable development in any context is closely connected to democracy. And that a free press is a precondition of democracy – and vice versa. … Scientific research, development of agricultural practice, husbandry and industry, care of the environment and so on are closely connected to a free and critical press.”

Title: Jubilee speech at NIMB
Posted at http://www.danskeslagterier.dk/smmedia/DLP-jub-Nimb-tale_doc?mb_GUID=EE90C017-0BD4-457B-93EB-D67689D85968.doc

You are marketing solutions, not food products. That message came through clearly from a speaker at the recent National Institute of Animal Agriculture conference in Louisville, Kentucky. Frank Beurskens of ShoptoCook, Inc., highlighted “Meal planning in the supermarket aisle: what consumers are telling us.” Among the insights from this presentation:

What to serve each day is the biggest challenge facing shoppers
Many complain about “recipe rut,” especially in preparing chicken
Shoppers are especially looking for meal items that kids will like
They are begging for variety and want to serve healthful food

Presentation posted, via Truffle Media Networks, at http://www.trufflemedia.com/home/content/frank-beurskens-meal-planning-in-the-supermarket-aisle-what-consumers-are-telling-us

Busy season for communicator activities

June 6-10, 2009
“When tillage begins, other arts follow.” ACE.NETC.09 sponsored by the National Extension Technology Conference (NETC) and the Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences (ACE), in Des Moines, Iowa USA.
Information: http://www.extension.iastate.edu/acenetc2009

June 13-16, 2009
“Branding communications with a kick.” Annual Institute of the Cooperative Communicators Association (CCA) in Kansas City, Missouri USA.
Information: http://www.communicators.coop

June 22-24, 2009
7th World Congress of Computers in Agriculture and Natural Resources in Reno, Nevada USA.
Information: www.wcca2009.org

Resolved to “be a wiser wordsmith.” Early this year we added to the ACDC collection a column in which agricultural reporter Cyndi Young-Puyear expressed this goal. She captured a desire and challenge shared by many agricultural journalists and communicators, everywhere: “These are words I just love to roll around on my tongue before speaking them, and others I could choke on before spitting them out.”

Not among her favorites: “carbon footprint,” “faith-based,” “at the end of the day” and acronyms that are “unfamiliar to almost everyone outside of production agriculture.”

ACDC News – Issue 09-09

Posted on May 1, 2009 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

Update on broadband service in rural America . Recently we added to the ACDC collection the 2009 edition of “Rural Broadband at a Glance,” a report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Among the findings reported:

Broadband access for both rural and urban populations increased rapidly between 2000 and 2006.
Clusters of lower service exist in areas with sparse, aging and declining populations.
Internet use (at home or elsewhere) during 2007 reached 63 percent among rural households, compared with 73 percent among urban households.
Business development, telemedicine and teleworking are among the drivers for broadband development in rural areas.

Posted at http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB47/EIB47.pdf

We missed a message. Did you try to get in touch with us recently about something related to agriculture as portrayed in the ads? An e-mail message with a title to that effect got lost, by accident. We apologize and would encourage you to resend it.

Preparing agricultural journalists/communicators for the 21st Century. Thanks to those who kindly shared their views recently about how to design an undergraduate agricultural journalism/communications program for the 21st Century. Their responses are being added to the ACDC collection. Also, with this issue we begin a series that highlights their suggestions.

Part 1. Samantha Yates, Publications Specialist with the Cotton Economics Research Institute, Texas Tech University , suggests these areas for emphasis:

Proper grammar
A style of writing that is both intelligent and that speaks to the level of your audience
Design and photography
Web design “is a must for ag communicators to learn”
“Communications theory and research was drilled into me all through graduate school, and while I thought a lot of it was pointless, it has made me better at my job.”

Read more of Samantha’s suggestions and reasons she offers for emphasizing them.

Shoppers still buying local during economic downturn . Two-thirds (65 percent) of United Kingdom shoppers now buy locally branded food, according to research by international grocery firm IGD. In response to a survey late last year, 60 percent predicted the economic slowdown will have no impact on those purchases. Only 20 percent expected to cut back.

“In these tough conditions, many people are keener than ever to support nearby jobs through their spending choices,” explained IGD Chief Executive Joanne Denney-Finch. Research revealed that freshness and environmental reasons also account for consumers’ enthusiasm for local food.

Citation: Shoppers still buying local despite credit crunch
Posted at http://www.igd.com/index.asp?id=1&fid=6&sid=25&tid=90&folid=0&cid=419

“We love eBlasts,” said Denise Faguy in a recent issue of the Highlighter newsletter from Farms.com. “At least we do when they are done properly.” She emphasized how email blasts can:

Build brand awareness and loyalty
Drive traffic to your website
Raise awareness (as well as generate leader or sales) for specific products or services
Provide immediate feedback. “In marketing, feedback is such an important tool and that’s why we love eblasts!”

Citation: Why we love eBlasts
Posted at http://www.professional.farms.com/cms/en/eblast.aspx

Is dietary knowledge enough? No. Healthy eating involves more than increasing public awareness of better diets and healthy lifestyles. A recent research report we added from the U. S. Department of Agriculture documented the over-riding impact of “visceral,” impulsive influences.”

Analyses of data about food intake revealed that individuals were significantly likely to consume more calories and lower their diet quality when:

Intervals between meals were extended
They ate away from home

How about going out for a late meal this evening?

Citation: Is dietary knowledge enough?
Report posted at http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/ERR62/#2008-8-11

Busy season for communicator activities

May 21-25, 2009
“Keywords in communication.” 2009 conference of the International Communication Association in Chicago, Illinois USA.
Information: www.icahdq.org

May 24-28, 2009
“25 years of strengthening international agricultural and extension education.” Annual conference of the Association for International Agricultural and Extension Education (AIAEE) in Puerto Rico.
Information: www.aiaee.org

May 27-29, 2009
Fourth international conference on ICT for development, education and training in Dakar, Senegal.
Information: www.elearning-africa.com

June 22-24, 2009
7th World Congress of Computers in Agriculture and Natural Resources in Reno, Nevada USA.
Information: www.wcca2009.org

ACDC News – Issue 09-08

Posted on April 15, 2009 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

UK shoppers increasingly interested in animal welfare. Continuing research by IGD, United Kingdom, suggests that British shoppers are becoming increasingly engaged with standards of animal welfare when they buy food. This trend is apparent across five years of responses from shoppers.

20% of shoppers said in 2009 that knowing about the standards of animal welfare has become one of their key drivers for product choice. This is up from 8% in 2005, 10% in 2006, 11% in 2007 and 13% in 2008.
46% of shoppers said in 2009 they were concerned about animal living conditions. This is up from 30% in 2005 and 2006, 37% in 2007 and 38% in 2008.

Citation: Interest in animal welfare still increasing
Posted at: www.igd.com > Media Centre

Rural radio serials. Old fashioned? Think again . Thanks to Neil Inall of Australia for alerting us to a recent television feature emphasizing how “drama has been/is a top way to improve knowledge and to bring about behaviour change.” The feature was aired early this year on “Landline,” weekly Australian Broadcasting Corporation program about matters rural.

The featured guest, ABC rural journalist Ingrid Just, had won a Churchill scholarship to study radio serials in the United Kingdom and USA. She became acquainted with Britain’s much loved BBC rural radio serial, “The Archers.” In Iowa she took part in a serials workshop. Now, she says, “it is time the ABC was once again a world leader in the production of radio drama serials.”

The ACDC collection contains much evidence, internationally, to support Ingrid’s belief in the enduring effectiveness of radio as a powerful means of communicating about rural life, people and activities. Radio drama can capture the power of imagination.

Script posted at http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2008/s2503104.htm
“Play video” option available.

Who does what in addressing rural-urban matters. You can get a perspective by visiting the web site of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ). “Sorting the roles of journalists and other communicators in covering rural-urban issues” is the third in a series by Owen Roberts of the University of Guelph and Jim Evans of the University of Illinois. Here are some questions they addressed:

What do journalists affiliated with independent commercial media see as their roles in covering rural-urban matters?
What are the roles of journalists and communicators who represent interests wishing to advance points of view about such matters?
Have these roles changed, or are they changing?
Do independent and point-of-view communicators share some roles? If so, what?

Authors say they found this a tough assignment, both challenging and enlightening. And important. They invite the thoughts and ideas of others.

Posted at http://www.ifaj.org > Breaking News Section

Lessons in democracy from local weekly newspapers. Economic threats to newspapers and other news media are putting the U.S. democratic society at risk, an agricultural journalism professor emphasized in a recent call for action. Douglas P. Starr of Texas A&M University explained:

“In the United States, government by the people depends upon people’s access to information, information that is provided by the news media, mainly newspapers and their World Wide Web pages and their reporters, news editors, and copyeditors, all of whom contribute to the accuracy and objectivity of the news story.”

He identified seven things that must happen “for the good of the United States, for the good of all the people.” Of those, three touched on providing more local news – “what county weekly newspapers have been doing for generations.”

Citation: Future of the United States
Posted at: http://web.library.uiuc.edu/asp/agx/acdc/starr.pdf

Paid ads “creeping onto the front covers of magazines.” Thanks to Pam Smith for calling attention to a recent New York Times article about that topic. Agricultural magazines were not among those mentioned, but questions about selling cover ads are confronting agricultural publishers. The author of this article noted that such questions arise, in part, because of “tough times” and because “many new media have less stringent policies about where ads may appear.”

Posted at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/business/media/12adco.html?_r=1

We invite your help in identifying reports, editorials, commentaries and examples that involve separation of editorial and advertising content on the covers of agricultural magazines. Please send them to us at docctr@library.uiuc.edu – or point us toward such information. Thanks.

You can check recent progress in the Center. Read the latest annual summary of activities and progress in the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center here at the University of Illinois. It is posted on the ACDC web site.

Visit http://web.library.uiuc.edu/asp/agx/acdc/report2008.pdf

Communicator activities approaching

May 12-14, 2009
“Celebrating deep roots, strong branches, new heights.” Twentieth anniversary meeting of the Turf and Ornamental Communicators Association (TOCA) in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Information: www.toca.org

May 27-29, 2009
Fourth international conference on ICT for development, education and training in Dakar, Senegal.
Information: www.elearning-africa.com

The long winter and economic downturn have affected our lexophiles. We can tell by some of the strange mental meanderings of these lovers of words:

You feel stuck with your debt if you can’t budge it.
A lot of money is tainted. ‘Taint yours and ‘taint mine.
Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.

ACDC News – Issue 09-07

Posted on April 1, 2009 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

French television ads feature farm jobs . “L`agriculture, des métiers à la mode” (farming jobs are in fashion) is the theme of a television advertising campaign in France to attract people into agriculture. It is sponsored by an agricultural organization, FNSEA, and we became aware of it through an item in the Farmers Weekly Interactive (UK).

These six brief spots are not your usual rural promotions. When you watch them online you should be ready for “How’s-that-again?” images such as baled-hay earphones and a purple sheep.

Posted at: http://www.fwi.co.uk/Articles/2009/02/28/114520/video-french-tv-campaign-to-attract-people-into-farming.html

Ten new agricultural communications research reports . Faculty members and graduate students presented 10 research reports at the recent annual meeting of the Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists (SAAS) in Atlanta, Georgia. Here are the topics addressed in the Agricultural Communications Section:

You can review these papers at: http://agnews.tamu.edu/saas/saasproceedings.html

Rural learning from a hole in the wall. School-based education is outside the domain of this Center, but implications of educational researcher Sugata Mitra’s “hole in the wall” experiments in remote sectors of India extend far beyond the classroom. In fact, as you may know, “hole in the wall” experiments inspired the movie “Slumdog Millionaire,” winner of four Golden Globe Awards.

What happens when you install an internet-connected computer and touchpad in a hole in a wall of a remote village or urban slum area? No teacher or advisor on hand. No curriculum. Just leave it there.

“Minimally invasive education” and “outdoctrination” are terms Mitra uses to describe this insightful approach to learning in a digital era. It uses the power of collaboration and the mutual curiosity of children, complementing the framework of traditional schooling.

You can view a conference presentation in which Mitra described his remarkable experiments and the results of them: www.ted.com/index.php/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves.html

Here are other resources that may interest you:
Essay by Sugata Mitra about the wall project: www.ncl.ac.uk/egwest/holeinthewall.html
Hole in the Wall website: www.hole-in-the-wall.com

Eating on cruise control . The obesity epidemic is driving public health researchers to entertain the idea of focusing less on nutrition education and more on shaping the food environment. What about viewing eating as an automatic behavior, over which we have limited control? Writing in Preventing Chronic Disease , Deborah Cohen and Thomas Farley cited studies indicating that eating should be so viewed. For example:

Eating begins without conscious intent, often simply because it is mealtime.
People generally are not aware of how much they are eating.
The natural trajectory of eating is for it to continue.
People are less likely to stop eating because they were full than because no food or drink remains,

Authors also reported research pointing to “high levels of food marketing, accessibility, and quantity as the ‘toxic environment’ at the root of the obesity epidemic.” In this environment, they said, educational or motivational approaches to reducing consumption will continue to fail.

Citation: Eating as an automatic behavior
Posted at http://www.rand.org/pubs/reprints/2008/RAND_RP1326.pdf

Communicator activities approaching

April 19-21, 2009
Annual spring meeting of North American Agricultural Journalists (NAAJ) in Washington, D. C.
Information: www.naaj.net/meeting.html

May 27-29, 2009
Fourth international conference on ICT for development, education and training in Dakar, Senegal.
Information: www.elearning-africa.com

How to visualize the disappearance of farmland: a fresh photo idea. Photographer Scott Strazzante’s creative approach to visualizing rural-urban change earned “News Gem” honors during 2008. “Jon Marshall’s News Gems,” presented by the Society of Professional Journalists, are described as representing the best of American journalism. Here’s what earned the photographer that recognition:

“Six years ago photographer Scott Strazzante chronicled the dismantling of a family farm on the outskirts of metropolitan Chicago. Strazzante revisited the same plot of land where a subdivision now stands. With “Another Country” in the Chicago Tribune Magazine , he brilliantly juxtaposes pictures he took of the disappearing rural life with photos of the suburban present.”

Citation: Farm meets the subdivision

ACDC News – Issue 09-06

Posted on March 15, 2009 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

“Remember the poor sods who have to listen to you.” Those words, carved as graffiti on a lectern at Leeds University, were on the mind of Clive Dalton when he shared thoughts recently with members of the New Zealand Guild of Agricultural Journalists and Communicators. He praised the skills of a speaker who did just that – remembered the poor sods – in talking with journalism students.

“He restoreth my soul, and I saw a master at work,” Dalton explained. No PowerPoint visuals; “HE was the visual aid.” No movement from the lectern. Instead, the speaker remembered his audience. “He…was relaxed so made us feel relaxed, he used body language, facial gestures; he used varying voice tones with some fantastic mimicry…He used eye contact – self-deprecation. … He knew how we were feeling, and he ended with a clear motivating message for the students. He invited and dealt with the questions with warmth and respect, and we all wanted to hear more.

“Oh praise be, it was a wonderful example of how communication can be so effective and entertaining, if you get a few basic things right.”

Citation: Blessed be the communicators
Posted at http://www.guildag.co.nz

Roles for the agricultural library of the future. You can gain perspectives about the outlook for agricultural libraries by tuning in on a recent virtual conversation among members of the International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists.

Citation: What roles for the agricultural library
Posted at: http://iaald.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-accessible-is-your-agricultural.html

Rural radio and mobile phones – a powerful mix. An article we added recently to the ACDC collection from PCWorld described efforts in Africa and elsewhere to help rural listeners interact in real time with radio programming. Examples cited:

Farmers sharing information about crop conditions and farming practices
Receiving and sending market prices for crops and livestock
Being interviewed over the phone
Asking questions during live radio shows via text messages

Reporter Ken Banks observed, “Although I’m a great fan of mobile phone technology, it isn’t by default the best tool for reaching out to rural communities. Radio – far from being outdated and irrelevant – remains a powerful, relevant and far-reaching medium. Unrivalled, in fact.”

Citation: Mobile phones join the rural radio mix

“Link rot” – Web-based erosion of agricultural knowledge. What happens when authors cite URLs in the reference sections of their publications – or organizations or individuals post reports or proceedings on web sites? “Link rot” happens. Live links become dead links. How much of such information is lost?

A research article published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology offered a clue. Author Carmine Sellitto examined the permanence of 1,068 Web-located citations in 123 academic conference articles published between 1995 and 2003.

46 percent of all citations to Web-located sources could not be accessed.
Collectively, the missing citations accounted for 22 percent of all citations, “which represents a significant reduction in the theoretical knowledge base underpinning many scholarly articles.”

Our approach, based on counsel from library archivists, is to capture online material when possible and preserve it in paper or electronic format. As a result, when you identify a document of interest in the ACDC collection and find in the citation that the noted URL is no longer working you should get in touch with us. We fight “link rot” by working to maintain access to all documents you identify in the ACDC collection.

And they tease us about talking to animals . Here’s more ammunition to use when detractors ask you (with that sly grin) if agricultural communicators talk to animals. We recently added to the ACDC collection the report of an Associated Press-Petside.com phone survey among 1,129 randomly chosen pet owners. Among the findings:

Two-thirds of the responding pet owners said they understand their animals’ barks, purrs and other sounds.
Sixty-two percent said that when they speak their pets get the message.
One-fifth said they and their pets understand each others’ sounds completely.

Citation: Poll: 67% of pet owners say they “talk”
Posted at http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2008-12-17-pets_N.htm

Communicator activities approaching

April 15-17, 2009
“Hot ideas and sizzling solutions.” 2009 Agri-Marketing Conference sponsored by the National Agri-Marketing Association (NAMA) in Atlanta, Georgia USA.
Information: http://www.nama.org/amc

May 27-29, 2009
Fourth international conference on ICT for development, education and training in Dakar, Senegal.
Information: www.elearning-africa.com

Words to be banished this year. We close this issue of ACDC News with some environmental and economy-related words considered worthy to be banish. They appeared in the “2009 List of Banished Words” from word-watchers at Lake Superior State University, Sault Ste Marie, Michigan. Here are a few of them nominated as worthy to be “banished…for mis-use, over-use and general uselessness:”

Green (and all its variables, such as “going green)
Carbon footprint
Bailout
It’s that time of year again

Posted at http://www.lssu.edu/banished/current.php

What words related to food and agriculture might you add to a 2009 list as worthy to be banished?

Please send them to us by return e-note . Thanks.

ACDC News – Issue 09-05

Posted on March 1, 2009 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

Experimental model for hyperlocal rural community journalism. The Forum , a citizen-driven news website that serves several rural communities in New Hampshire, is the focus of a report we added recently to the ACDC collection. With part-time paid editors and more than a hundred volunteer authors, “the content of the audience-driven Forum reflects the communities it serves.” Founders launched this not-for-profit enterprise under the auspices of the “friends” group of a local library.

You can read a case study of operations and outcomes in a report from the Beckman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

Citation: The Forum
Posted at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/files/The%20Forum_MR.pdf

Internet access in rural China. We recently added to the ACDC collection a book by Jinqiu Zhao, The Internet and rural development in China: the socio-structural paradigm. The author’s research provided empirical evidence about the impact of the Internet on the livelihood of rural people. It also identified some innovative uses of the Internet in rural development.

Experiences in four rural places indicated that “the existing economy and infrastructure of the rural areas can hardly sustain the adoption of an advanced technology as the Internet, whose diffusion at these rural places is by no means a natural development. While farmers may have individual choices in selecting the traditional means of communication for information about the market, scientific farming, health and other issues, the Internet as an advanced technology could only be introduced to them through either a government initiative…or an external investment.”

Citation: The Internet and rural development in China

Agricultural data mining – 164 years back. Reports added recently to the ACDC collection described some incredible agricultural reporting. “Documenting Louisiana Sugar 1845-1917,” a project at the University of Sussex (UK), explained how three agricultural economists collected data throughout that time period for the annual “Louisiana Sugar Report.” Records include plantation ownership, indexes of cane growers and manufacturers, sugar prices, crop yields, production technologies used, stocks, trade detail and other information.

Those data, now publicly available through the project, provide access to a hundred thousand data entries that “provide scholars, genealogists, and members of the public with an unparalleled opportunity to examine the plantation regime in exceptional depth.…No other public database detailing plantation life in this detail exists.”

Citation: Bouchereau, the Louisiana Sugar Report
Posted at http://www.sussex.ac.uk/louisianasugar

“Why we love eBlasts.” In a feature article we added recently to the ACDC collection Denise Faguy said she and her associates at Farms.com Professional Services love email blasts. They can, she explained: (a) build brand awareness and loyalty, (b) drive traffic to your website and (c) raise awareness for specific products or services, as well as generate leads or sales.

“But here is the part we LOVE about eblasts,” she added. She emphasized the value of immediate feedback, the detailed tracking of user activity in response to them.

Posted at: http://www.professional.farms.com/cms/en/eblast.aspx

How we pay – and what we eat . Do consumers choose healthier diets when they pay by cash, or by debit card? U. S. Department of Agriculture researchers found several patterns among college students who were permitted to pay for their school cafeteria meals by (a) cash, (b) prepaid debit cards that could be used for any menu item or (c) prepaid debit cards that could be used for more healthful items only:

Payment method affected the amount they spent on meals. Those using cash spent more on average than those using restricted or unrestricted debit cards.
Payment method also affected the types of food chosen. Students paying with cash made healthier food choices than those with an unrestricted debit card. Those paying with a restricted debit card made the healthiest choices.

“In many cases, these differences were prominent and suggest that it is possible to change behavior by altering payment methods used for different foods,” researchers concluded.

Citation: Behavioral economic concepts to encourage healthy eating
Posted at http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/ERR68

View vintage art (in farm magazines). Recently we came across some striking art on farm magazine covers from the Golden Age of American illustration. They are featured online within the “Farm Magazines” gallery of the web site of MagazineArt.com. You can see vintage art on covers of the following farm magazines: Country Gentleman, Country Home, Farm Journal, Successful Farming and Better Fruit . Featured art appeared on covers of issues that were published between 1909 and 1934.

Posted at: http://www.magazineart.com/main.php/v/farm

Communicator activities approaching

May 17-19, 2009
“Parlez-vouz marketing?” Seminar of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) in Montreal, Canada.
Information: http://www.aem.org/education/confsems/mc/index.asp

May 27-29, 2009
Fourth international conference on ICT for development, education and training in Dakar, Senegal.
Information: www.elearning-africa.com

Encouraging young photographers. You can view online a nice set of creative photographs taken during 2008 by members of the Missouri 4-H Photo Corps. This is an initiative of the 4-H office of the University of Missouri Extension. Rural Missouri magazine and several electric cooperatives supported the project by commenting on the 4-Hers’ work and publishing photographs.

These young photographers were encouraged to try unique points of view in their photos, according to an article in Rural Missouri , “and they came through with shining colors.”

Citation: Picturing Missouri
See the article and photos selected from more than 500 submissions at: http://www.ruralmissouri.coop/08pages/08Dec4HPhotoCorps.html

ACDC News – Issue 09-04

Posted on February 15, 2009 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

“Be persistent and have a thick skin.” As livestock editor of Successful Farming magazine (U.S.), Betsy Freese has provided an interesting example of enterprise journalism. A feature posted recently on the web site of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ) explained how she used her initiative to establish a highly read, nationally valued annual series known as “Pork Powerhouses.” Information that she gathered and reported came from sources she identified, established and has maintained across the years.

You can learn how she came upon the idea and developed it, what challenges she faced, what satisfactions she found and what advice she offers for this entrepreneurial kind of agricultural reporting.

Posted at http://www.ifaj.org/professional-development/articles/be-persistent-and-have-a-thick-skin.html

Scientists listen to talking plants. Here’s another response you can use when friends ask if you, as an agricultural communicator, talk to plants or animals. We spotted it recently while searching for agricultural communications literature.

According to an article in the Jerusalem Post , Bar-Ilan University scientists have developed a way to detect and measure contamination in a body of water by “listening” to the sound that microscopic algae plants release into it.

“A plant suffering from lead poisoning for example, which comes from waste released by battery and paint manufacturing plants into water sources, will produce a different resonance than that of a healthy plant. The method enables early detection of penetrating contaminants and toxins that harm flora and fauna.”

Citation: Talking plants tell scientists their water is contaminated
Posted at http://www.jpost.com > Site search: “talking plants”

Using local media creatively in rural areas . Montana Journalism Review recently tackled the issue of rural coverage, using this theme: “The Challenges of Rural Journalism.” Here are titles of the articles featured:

“The truth and other howlers: In the West’s environmental wars, truth is often the first casualty”
“Cowflops and cowtowns: Urban journalist remembers rural stories and sagebrush survival”
“Peaks and valleys: Geography keeps the news away from rural Kyrgyzstan”
“Creating a news network: A team of University of Montana students and professors are building a new kind of journalism in the rural communities of Montana”
“Kids, cattle, grain, minerals and journalism: Community support keeping the signal alive at rural radio station”
“Introducing the nonprofit newspaper hybrid: The Corporation for Public Community Newspapers creates a new business model for hometown papers”

Citation: Challenges of rural journalism
You can read these articles posted at http://www.umt.edu/journalism/mjr/mjr2007.htm

And for you music lovers, we would call attention to an online vocal performance that accompanied these articles about challenges in rural journalism.

You can hear the staff members of Montana Journalism Review sing “I’ve read every sheet” to a familiar tune, “I’ve been everywhere” by Geoff Mack. The poem, written “late one night” by Dennis Swibold of the journalism faculty, cites nearly 100 titles of newspapers in Montana.

“We were a little off,” says a voice in the background after the song ends. Perhaps, but we think you may enjoy listening to it.

Posted at http://www.umt.edu/journalism/mjr/mjr2007/pages/toc.htm

Thanks for your thoughts about career preparation – and we welcome more . Thanks to those who have kindly offered thoughts and suggestions about how to design an undergraduate agricultural journalism/communications program for the 21st Century. We welcome other suggestions as well about these and other aspects of such a program:

Communications skills in which undergraduate students in agricultural journalism/communications need to be most proficient.
Particular agricultural areas, if any, in which they need more schooling.
Whether they need to be educated in communications theory and research.

Please pass along your reactions and suggestions. Send them to evansj@illinois.edu . They will contribute to progress in this field of professional interest. Thank you.

Communicator activities approaching

March 12-14, 2009
“Return. Rebuild. Renew.” Spring meeting of the Agricultural Relations Council (ARC) in New Orleans, Louisiana USA.
Information: http://www.agrelationscouncil.org

May 17-19, 2009
“Parlez-vouz marketing?” Seminar of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) in Montreal, Canada.
Information: http://www.aem.org/education/confsems/mc/index.asp

Just what the doctor ordered. We close this issue of ACDC News with a printer’s tale from the Agricultural Publishers Association Archives housed here at the University of Illinois. We are reviewing this APA collection, in search of information about trends, progress and issues in agricultural publishing across the decades.

Do you sense a kindred spirit here? In 1926, APA Executive Secretary V. F. Hayden reported:

“A printer received an inquiry from a surgeon who wanted bids on several thousand letterheads, different sizes, grades and colors, and he wanted the form held standing.

“The printer replied: ‘Am in the market for one operation for appendicitis, one, two, or five inch incision, with or without ether; also with or without nurse. Quotations must include putting appendix back and canceling the order if found sound. Successful bidder is expected to hold incision open for sixty days, as I expect to be in the market for an operation for gall-stones, and I want to save the extra cost of cutting.'”

ACDC News – Issue 09-03

Posted on February 1, 2009 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

Punchy drought reporting. “Jim Goodrich is, in a word, desperate. He’s a rancher. He’s used to being, well, concerned. Or worried. Or just dispatching a hard stare into an unforgiving sky. But being desperate is another thing. There’s not a drop of cowboy romance in it.”

With this lead, reporter Mike Littwin of the Rocky Mountain News described the plight of ranchers gripped by drought in southeastern Colorado. His entire article featured this punchy, graphic writing style, which you can review online.

Citation: For dry cowpunchers, a standing eight count

Article posted at: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/news_columnists/article/0,1299,DRMN_86_4830374,00.html

From journalism to corporate communication in post-war Britain. That is the title of a chapter in Journalism, science and society , a recent book we have reviewed for the Center. Authors Martin W. Bauer and Jane Gregory note a change “from the state and ‘public’ technologies such as nuclear power and space exploration to the reporting of commercial and ‘private’ technologies such as biotechnology.” They describe this as the “medicalization” of science news.

They also examine shifts and frictions between the traditionally skeptical professions (science and journalism) and public relations professions that “minimize controversy and a critical response.”

Citation: From journalism to corporate communication

Check with us at docctr@library.uiuc.edu if you want to follow up on this resource.

An honored approach to covering the “local food” scene. We learned recently of a husband-and-wife reporter team at the Anchorage Daily News that earned “News Gem” recognition for a fresh approach to reporting about local foods. In a four-part series, reporter Stephanie Komarnitsky and photographer Stephen Nowers shared with readers the experiences of their week trying to eat only locally grown and raised food.

Jon Marshall’s “News Gems” are presented by the Society of Professional Journalists to highlight the best of American journalism.

Citation: Taste test

The four features in their series are posted at: http://www.adn.com/life/eating_local

Cooking up fresh insights about local foods . A creative initiative, “Schools Harvest,” in New South Wales, Australia, recently involved students, teachers, local producers, chefs and others in dramatizing the whole food supply chain. It was coordinated by staff from the Hawkesbury campus of the University of Western Sydney.

Area high school students provided vegetables and meats from their school plots.
Working with teachers and the head chef of a local hotel, they designed a special menu and provided waiters for the meal.
A community-based organization, Hawkesbury Harvest, also provided some fresh, seasonal produce.
On November 21 the students served their meal to 80 parents and teachers.Thanks to Neil Inall of Roseville, Australia, for alerting us to this program.

Citation: Students cook up a treat for teachers and parents

Posted online at: http://web.library.uiuc.edu/asp/agx/acdc/hawk.pdf

We’re gaining on it, Hadley. “Nothing would please me more than to see all of our research reference materials filed in one place,” long-time associate Hadley Read reported in a memo dated July 31, 1963. At that time Hadley was extension editor here at the University of Illinois.

We came across his memo last week among some historical references being added to the ACDC collection. It set off a nostalgia binge as we think about efforts here since then to help assemble agricultural communications literature, internationally, and make it available to those who can benefit from it.

Our year-end records show that the ACDC collection now contains more than 33,500 documents, including (we hope) those to which Hadley referred more than 45 years ago.

How would you design an undergraduate agricultural journalism/communications program for the 21st Century?

Recently we were invited to offer thoughts and suggestions about this question, including several specific aspects:

Communications skills in which undergraduate students in agricultural journalism/communications need to be most proficient.
Particular agricultural areas, if any, in which they need more schooling.
Whether they need to be educated in communications theory and research.

How would you respond to these questions? Please pass along your reactions and suggestions. Send them to evansj@illinois.edu . They will contribute to progress in this field of professional interest. Thank you.

Communicator activities approaching

March 12-14, 2009
“Return. Rebuild. Renew.” Spring meeting of the Agricultural Relations Council (ARC) in New Orleans, Louisiana USA. Information: http://www.agrelationscouncil.org
April 15-17, 2009
“Hot ideas and sizzling solutions.” 2009 Agri-Marketing Conference sponsored by the National Agri-Marketing Association (NAMA) in Atlanta, Georgia USA. Information: http://www.nama.org/amc
May 17-19, 2009
“Parlez-vouz marketing?” Seminar of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) in Montreal, Canada. Information: http://www.aem.org/education/confsems/mc/index.asp
June 6-10, 2009
“When tillage begins, other arts follow.” ACE.NETC.09 sponsored by the National Extension Technology Conference (NETC) and the Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences (ACE), in Des Moines, Iowa USA. Information: http://www.extension.iastate.edu/acenetc2009
June 13-16, 2009
“Branding communications with a kick.” Annual Institute of the Cooperative Communicators Association (CCA) in Kansas City, Missouri USA. Information: http://www.communicators.coop

“Not enough about popcorn!” That unexpected suggestion arrived recently from UK rural journalist Alan Stennett in response to our invitation for feedback. He was referring to a family popcorn project here, a labor of love in the tradition of Walker Evans, Jim’s father. We hesitate to mention the project because:

It doesn’t involve documents for the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center.
It’s not a model of marketing communications in support of “value added” farming. (Most of the “value added” takes the form of free labor.)
It reflects use of no new media or advanced farming technologies.

However, it does represent a dimension of “professional development,” an agricultural communicator’s effort to enrich family experiences and stay close to the soil. If you would like to see what’s involved in such an effort you can view a brief feature aired a couple years ago on public television station WILL-TV. The URL is: http://www.will.illinois.edu/prairiefire/segment/pf2006-02-23-b

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.

ACDC News – Issue 09-02

Posted on January 15, 2009 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

Remembering the communicator’s real business. Thanks to Brad Schneller for alerting us to a commentary by Paul Berton in the London Free Press ( Ontario, Canada). In this piece, “Not if, but how, we’ll deliver news,” Berton addressed the influence of new media on the newspaper publishing business. “People have been talking for years about the death of newspapers,” Berton noted, “and that may well be inevitable. But media companies will survive and thrive…” More news than ever is flowing, he observed, through a broadening assortment of channels. His point was that the future of newspapers may be unclear, but not the future of news.

Read the commentary posted at http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/Columnists/Berton_Paul/2008/12/20/7812321-sun.html

What about the agricultural media? Resources in the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center suggest that the same holds true in agricultural journalism. Searching the past century of information in this collection, you can find ample reason to agree with Paul Berton about keeping an eye not only on specific media but also on the communicator’s real business. Following are a few among many examples, across the years, of documented threats and challenges to specific channels used for agricultural information.

(1906) Is the farm paper a has been?
(1938) How radio may modify the functions of the newspaper
(1955) Turmoil in magazines
(1963) Schaller heaps doom and gloom on farm publications
(1975) Farm broadcasting in transition

Naturally, these documents are not available online in full text. However, contact us at docctr@library.uiuc.edu if you wish to see any of them. All documents you identify in the ACDC database are available at the Center or elsewhere here in the University of Illinois Library system. That feature is special to a documentation center. We adopted it in ACDC, from the start, to add value for users.

A call for scientists to be advocates, not unbiased consultants. Yes, you read that correctly. Authors of a recent article in the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics argued against a two-stage process in which (a) scientists find out the facts, then (b) policy makers decide what to do with those facts. These two stages cannot be clearly separated, according to Stephen Haller and James Gerrie. They also confronted “the technocratic vision where decisions are best left up to the experts,” — where, for example, “scientists would deliver the final word on a policy about SARS, or mad cow, or whatever.”

In their 27-page report, Haller and Gerrie suggested that when scientific claims enter the public policy realm, they must always do so in concert with value claims. In that ordinary process of democratic decision-making, scientists enter public policy debates as “participants in particular interest groups… rather than as supposedly unbiased consultants to decision-makers.”

Citation: The role of science in public policy

How consumers react to food recalls . Most Canadians changed their buying and eating behavior following a recall associated with listeria in ready-to-eat meats, according to a recent survey summary we have added to the ACDC collection. Among the findings of this survey by University of Guelph researchers:

30 percent said they stopped buying ready-to-eat meats from Canada.
27 percent reported eating less often at restaurants and fast-food outlets.
52 percent reported paying more attention to food labels.
32 percent reported cooking more food at home

About 70 percent of respondents said their perception of the safety of meat in general, of food products, and of food as a whole had not changed.

Citation: Consumers changing habits
Posted at http://www.uoguelph.ca/news/2008/12/post_157.html

Communications – among the top strategic challenges for U. S. agriculture. A new report from the Farm Foundation examines issues agriculture and policy makers will face during the next 30 years in addressing the challenge of providing food, fiber and energy to a growing world. “Public understanding of agriculture” emerged as one of eight recurring themes vital to agriculture’s strategic role. According to the report:

“Bridging the gap in understanding between agriculture and the broader public will be critical to the development of policies needed to meet the 30-year challenge.”

Citation: The 30-year challenge
News release, executive summary and full report (53 pages) posted at: http://www.farmfoundation.org

Recognizing a new and “virtual” ACDC associate . We are pleased to recognize and welcome Professor Steve Shenton as a volunteer staff associate in the Center. Based in Pennsylvania, he brings special interests and strengths in agricultural and rural aspects of free expression, public/civic journalism and community journalism.

Steve’s work with the Center is not new as he has provided helpful documents and leads across the years. Nor is he a stranger to the agricultural communications program here at the University of Illinois. During his doctoral studies in communications in the Institute of Communications Research, he served as an outstanding graduate teaching assistant and for three years as an instructor in agricultural communications. His academic background includes studies in agriculture as well as communications. He served on the communications/journalism faculty and as its chair at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania for more than 26 years prior to his retirement. We value Steve’s contributions to the Center and appreciate his willingness to contribute through his special expertise and interests.

Sharp eyes and ears for the world. Please let us know if you would like to consider being a volunteer staff associate in this Center. Perhaps you can provide “eyes and ears” in search of information about agricultural journalism and agricultural communications – in your part of the world, or in your special area of communications interest. Why can’t a global “virtual network” of dedicated ACDC associates cover more of this important world of interest without a huge budget? Contact Jim Evans at evansj@illinois.edu .

Communicator activities approaching

March 12-14, 2009
“Return. Rebuild. Renew.” Spring meeting of the Agricultural Relations Council (ARC) in New Orleans, Louisiana USA.
Information: http://www.agrelationscouncil.org

May 17-19, 2009
“Parlez-vouz marketing?” Seminar of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) in Montreal, Canada.
Information: http://www.aem.org/education/confsems/mc/index.asp

Photographing – yes – bee beards . Some of the most interesting agricultural photographs we have seen recently involve “bee beards” growing in Canada. Agri Digest Online , based in British Columbia, posted five eye-catching photos taken at a recent conference of the Western Apicultural Society of North America. These photos featured several brave souls (including a broadcaster) who demonstrated how honey bees can form live beards.

Citation: Bee beards in Victoria, B.C.
View these photos at http://www.agridigest.com/index.html#pol > Scroll to Agri Gallery

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