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ACDC News – Issue 11-18

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

New mentoring program for agricultural journalists . A new resource about mentoring agricultural journalists is featured on the website of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ). Agricultural and business journalist Mechthilde Becker-Weigel describes what the Bonn State group of German Agricultural Journalists (VDAJ) offers its members.

“Given that the specialization of agricultural journalists is so varied, I became convinced that we sometimes need support,” she explains. “And that, within the network, we can do many things for each other and help each other. This is actually how the idea of mentoring in Bonn was created.”

Her feature briefly describes the objectives, participants, contents and process involved in the program. It addresses agricultural journalists in phases of change and reorientation in their careers.

You can view this mentoring feature in the “New at IFAJ” section on the home page at http://www.ifaj.org . Available in English and German language, it was coordinated through the professional development partnership of IFAJ and ACDC.

A call for greater precision in reporting risk data. A close look at media stories about contamination in farmed salmon has underlined the challenges that journalists face in the rhetorical practices they use. Researchers Shannon Amberg and Troy Hall analyzed the precision of data-based reporting in U.S. newspapers about results of two key scientific studies on this subject. They found that reporters commonly tended to interpret data in ways that amplified or downplayed risks. Examples:

“unacceptably high” levels

“slightly increase” the risk of getting cancer “later in life”

“far bigger risk” than the cancer concern

“well below” the FDA tolerance level

nutritional benefits “far outweigh” any leftover “trace” of PCBs

“Even highly precise numeric data were often presented in ways that were likely to confuse readers,” the researchers observed in this Science Communication article.

View the abstract here: http://scx.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/03/22/1075547009357599.abstract

Check with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu for help in gaining full-text access.

Widespread use of e-book about ICT in agriculture. Thanks to Dr. Ehud Gelb, Israel, for an update about use of the public domain free e-book, ICT in Agriculture: Perspectives of Technological Innovation. We called attention to it in an earlier issue of ACDC News and are pleased to learn it is getting widespread use.

“The book was accessed last year 300,000 times,” Dr. Gelb reports. “This year the trend is towards at least double that.”

He explains that ICT in Agriculture serves those who plan, initiate, develop, design and/or adopt information and communication technology programs. Authors are professionals with at least 20-25 years of hands-on experience with ICT adoption. In chapters of 4-5 pages, they share insights about approaches, constraints, obstacles encountered, pitfalls and other potential detrimental problems.

You can read the book by visiting the cover page at this address. Then proceed to the “Table of Contents” that includes links to the identified chapters.
http://departments.agri.huji.ac.il/economics/gelb-main.html

What’s happening in research about digital divides . A recent commentary in Media, Culture and Society examined gaps and advances in research about digital divides during the past two decades. Author Panayiota Tsatsou argued that:

Inequalities in the adoption and usage of information and communication technologies continue to frame the concept of digital divides.
Many aspects and forms of divides co-exist today, leading the concept to be defined and approached in various ways by contemporary research.
Future research should move beyond access and usage indicators. It should also explore socio-cultural and decision-making dynamics, including research that places within context indicators such as quality and variations in usage.

You can read the abstract of this article here: http://mcs.sagepub.com/content/33/2/317.extract

Check with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu for help in gaining full-text access.

Another suggested survival skill for new journalists in an internet era. Thanks to Geoffrey Moss of Wellington, New Zealand, for adding this skill to the list we featured in a recent issue of ACDC News:

“Who you know is more important than what you know. Spend time building networks by giving a useful service and by building trust with potential clients.”

A sampling of books we’ve reviewed recently . Searches for information about the communications aspects of agriculture continue to take us into fascinating territory. You may be interested in some of the books in which we have found such information during recent weeks. You will find detailed information about those of interest to you by using title searches in the ACDC search system:
http://web.library.uiuc.edu/asp/agx/acdc/search.html

The digital divide: facing a crisis or creating a myth?

The link between animal abuse and human violence

ICT4D: information and communication technology for development

Ain’t that a knee-slapper: rural comedy in the Twentieth Century

Crisis communications: a casebook approach

African women and ICTs: investigating technology, gender and empowerment

Women and the animal rights movement

Smoke or steam: a critique of environmental issues

The electronic front porch: an oral history of the arrival of modern media in rural Appalachia and the Melungeon community

Radio: a post nine-eleven strategy for reaching the world’s poor

Digital color grading makes subtle changes more powerful . We recently added to the ACDC collection a journal article that describes the heightened potentials for digital color grading. It mentioned, for example, a rural melodrama film designed almost entirely in brown, gray and earth tones.

Do digital technologies represent a revolution in uses of color? Author Scott Higgins suggests not. He advises that color grading via digital technologies “reminds us to view them against a historical background that emphasizes continuities, ancestry and the enduring sway of craft norms.”

You can read the abstract of the article here: http://con.sagepub.com/content/9/4/60.abstract
Check with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu for help in gaining full-text access.

Communicator activities approaching.

November 15-18, 2011
“Innovations in extension and advisory services.” International conference in Nairobi, Kenya. Sponsored by a variety of national, regional and international partners.Information: http://extensionconference2011.cta.int
January 23, 2012
Deadline for submitting research papers for presentation at the 2012 annual meeting of the International Association of Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences (ACE) in Annapolis, Maryland USA. Special Interest Group in Research invites papers relevant to agricultural communications. A companion recognition program for graduate student papers also is available. Information: Prof. Courtney Meyers at courtney.meyers@ttu.edu

Sorry, but we can’t resist closing this issue of ACDC News with several more fragments of online wisdom sent our way recently, a couple of them with a “food and drink” theme. Please forgive us.

A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.
She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.
(And for harried agricultural journalists) No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.

Best regards and good searching.

Please pass along your reactions, suggestions and ideas. Feel free to invite our help as you search for information. And please suggest (or send) agricultural communications documents we might add to this unique collection. We welcome them in hard copy (sent to Ag Comm Documentation Center, 510 LIAC, 1101 S. Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801) or in electronic format sent to docctr@library.illinois.edu .

( N.B. We have added inline URLs (instead of embedded links) to our newsletter items based on a reader’s request. As always, if you have any feedback for us, don’t hesitate to contact us.)

ACDC News – Issue 11-17

Posted on November 1, 2011 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

Survival tips for young journalists in an internet era. Veteran Canadian journalist Carol Goar suggests operating as a sheep that parts company with the flock. Here are eight ways she suggested doing so in the internet era “with its fractured audiences, proliferating platforms, shrinking attention spans and still-unclear economic rules.” She offered them in a new book, Media Values , we reviewed recently.

Learn to use your journalistic skills proficiently in whatever medium you choose.
Try not to personalize issues.
Strive not to sound preachy or look self-righteous.
Push yourself out of your comfort zone.
Be aware that one bold departure from conventional wisdom or one brilliant piece of writing won’t turn the tide.
Pay attention to what’s going right. People have an appetite for positive news.
Be prepared to face criticism, to be unfairly labeled, to be ignored by the too-busy-to-care majority.
Decide which is more important to you: your moral compass or your financial security.

You can read the publisher’s summary of this book here , or get in touch with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu . What survival tips might you add?

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

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

How policy disclosure and information sharing affect farm management. Thanks to agricultural journalist Masaru Yamada for contributing his research thesis about this subject to the ACDC collection. Masaru is senior staff writer of The Japan Agricultural News and executive committee member of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists. The title of his thesis, which is in Japanese:

“Challenge for communication improvement in farm management – a study on effects on farm management of policy disclosure, information sharing, and the role of journalism”

This is a valued addition. We look forward to helping preserve it and make these findings known and available, internationally. Please contact us at docctr@library.illinois.edu to gain access to this document.

“The scientists think and the public feels.” Three University of Reading (UK) researchers offered that perspective after they analyzed how experts and non-experts approach debates about crop and food genetic modification (GM). Their analysis appeared in a 2004 issue of Discourse and Society that we added recently to the ACDC collection. Based on in-depth interviews with scientists, non-experts and other stakeholders, authors observed that people frame the subject in various ways they may find valid, such as:

Morally (Is it justifiable?)
Economically (What does it cost?)
Socially (Who benefits?)
Politically (Who controls it?)
Aesthetically (Does it make food more pleasing to the senses?)
Scientifically (Is it safe?)

“Conversely, scientists tend to see only the frame of empirical objectivity as legitimate. Other frames are viewed as irrelevant, or even dangerously anti-science…” Authors found that GM scientists tended to see communication “very much as the transfer of information, and the main concern was with how their technically complicated understanding of GM could be simplified to become accessible to the scientifically uneducated.”

Read the abstract here . Check with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu for help in gaining full-text access. Do you have thoughts, or other references to suggest, about this topic?

New global overview of farmer-to-farmer video . Special thanks to Paul Van Mele of AGROinsight, Ghent, Belgium, for alerting us to a new 47-page report , “Video-mediated farmer-to-farmer learning for sustainable agriculture.” It includes a comprehensive, timely summary of feedback during 2011 from more than 500 people across the world who responded to his online survey. The report highlights these topics:

Video in agricultural extension
Models of producing and disseminating farmer training videos
Agricultural videos on the internet
Feasibility of web-based platform for video sharing: need, proposed content, opportunities and challenges

Rhetoric or reality? The mobile phone “revolution” in Africa . The continent is home to 350 million mobile phone subscribers, reported Sebastiana Etzo and Guy Collender in a 2010 article in African Affairs . Moreover, “their numbers are growing faster than anywhere else in the world.” Penetration rates at the time of reporting averaged over 33 percent across Africa. The authors reported sample agriculture-related uses:

Veterinarians in Zanzibar collecting health information by mobile phone
Foresters in Ethiopia monitoring tree planting projects
Rural health workers collecting data, calling ambulances, educating, diagnosing
Growers gathering market and weather information, as well as trading

Authors also identified limits and risks, such as:

Contributing to widening the gap between the poor and the poorest
Literacy and language issues

Advanced technologies can be used in positive or negative ways, they cautioned.

For access from the publisher, visit here . Or check with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu for help in gaining access. Please let us know if you can recommend other references about rural uses of mobile phones.

Thanks to Fred Myers for Running the Gamut. This veteran agricultural journalist recently contributed to the ACDC collection a copy of his new book of writings. In fact, he kindly provided not only the published book, but also a loose-leaf paper copy and a CD for electronic access. Recipient of the 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Agricultural Editors’ Association, Fred has assembled more than 120 professional development columns he wrote for the AAEA newsletter and his own website during the past 20 years. We already have more than 40 of his columns in the ACDC collection, so will be able to add another 80-plus for future reference.

Across the years, Fred has been an active mentor, cheerleader and conscience for agricultural journalists. His writings have ranged broadly across topics as diverse as:

“What a few words can do”
“Giving wings to the eagle within”
“The erosion of truth”

We are entering into the ACDC database not only his new book, but also his individual columns. So you will be able to identify all of them and gain access through an Author search (Myers) on the ” Document Search ” page of our website.

Communicator activities approaching.

November 9-11, 2011
“Insight for agriculture…every day.” Annual convention of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting (NAFB) in Kansas City, Missouri. Information: www.nafb.com
November 9-12, 2011
“Innovative approaches for agricultural knowledge management: global extension experiences.” Conference of the International Society of Extension Education, New Delhi, India. Information: http://inseeworld.com/conference.htm
November 15-18, 2011
“Innovations in extension and advisory services.” International conference in Nairobi, Kenya. Sponsored by a variety of national, regional and international partners. Information: http://extensionconference2011.cta.int
January 23, 2012
Deadline for submitting research papers for presentation at the 2012 annual meeting of the International Association of Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences (ACE) in Annapolis, Maryland USA. Special Interest Group in Research invites papers relevant to agricultural communications. A companion recognition program for graduate student papers also is available. Information: Prof. Courtney Meyers at courtney.meyers@ttu.edu

A subtle way to say, “Get busy.” We close this issue of ACDC News with a remark quoted in Eleonora Gullone’s book chapter, “A lifespan perspective on human aggression and animal abuse.”

“The difference between what we know and what we do
is greater than the difference between what we know and don’t know.
Therefore, our need for action is currently greater
than our need for more research.”

Source: Andrew Linzey (editor), The link between animal abuse and human violence. Sussex Academic Press, Brighton, UK. 2009.

Best regards and good searching.

ACDC News – Issue 11-16

Posted on October 19, 2011 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

New media – new life for rural radio . Rural radio can dramatically boost knowledge and adoption, especially within active rather than passive listening communities. That’s what Kevin Perkins, executive director of Farm Radio International, reported during his presentation at the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ) Congress in Canada during September. Findings came from research among rural listeners in five African nations.

And how are cell phones and the Internet affecting rural radio? They are making radio more interactive, Perkins explained. “The new media are giving new life to radio.”

You can view his presentation visuals here .

Also, you can view a report of five case studies about “active listening communities” and how they boosted the uptake of agricultural improvements. Please send us at

docctr@library.uiuc.edu other examples you have seen, as well as your thoughts about how to form active listening communities in any country.

Find wording better than “integrated pest management.” Communicators need to side-step that terminology when working with non-professional gardeners or the general public. That’s the message from results of recent research among urban California residents. Only 4.9 percent of the respondents had heard the term, “integrated pest management or the “IPM” abbreviation. Researchers advised:

“…the alternative terms given by respondents suggest that a more effective term for IPM should have a more descriptive context and should reflect the expressed desire of many respondents not to harm the environment, people or pets.”

How European experts view traceability of foods and ingredients. A recent British Food Journal article reported on research among European food risk managers to assess the advantages and disadvantages of traceability. Through a two-round Delphi technique, experts identified nine advantages on which more than 50 percent agreed. Topping that list was the advantage of accurately tracing products if a safety incident occurs.

Managers identified three disadvantages on which more than 50 percent agreed:

Varied accuracy of traceability between links in the chain
Administration and paperwork required
Limited reliability of the system used.

You can gain access to this article, “Experts’ perspectives on the implementation of traceability in Europe,” from the publisher here .

In an epidemic – putting video presentations onto the Web quickly. Extension crop specialist Steven Johnson and associates in Maine wanted to respond quickly when epidemics of potato and tomato late blight hit the northeastern U.S. during the 2009 growing season. Many farmers and gardeners were not prepared for this widespread and devastating disease. We have added to the ACDC collection Johnson’s report about how he quickly created a seven-minute playable voiced-over presentation that was posted to the Web.

Creative way to publish a rural community newspaper. Residents of Blackall, a small agricultural community in Queensland, Australia, lost their newspaper in 2001. Instead of giving up, though, they assembled a team that resurrected the Barcoo Independent . Their innovative approach involved:

Local editorial control
A digital publishing system based 735 kilometers away
College journalism students (also located away from the community) using digital technologies to help gather, write and provide news for the paper

You can read the abstract of a case report about this project in the journal, Convergence . Check with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu for help in gaining full-text access.

A link is a contract you make with your users. That is a guideline for managing websites effectively. But our online search for agricultural communications information reveals how often it’s not followed. For example, here’s our recent experience in trying to retrieve nine references for which live links were provided in the online proceedings of a 2004 international conference. None of the nine links provided access to those references.

Sometimes content on a website simply gets removed or lost. Sometimes it is moved from the main page to a more permanent home elsewhere in the site. “This is bad practice, but extremely common,” ACDC associate Gemma Petrie explains.

Such experience with ephemeral web content supports our belief that ACDC has an important role to play in:

Helping capture and archive valuable online information about agricultural journalism and communications
Assuring that it can be available during the decades ahead

What experiences have you had with this problem? What ideas and suggestions might you offer for avoiding or addressing it? Send them to us at docctr@library.uiuc.edu

Communicator activities approaching

November 9-11, 2011
“Insight for agriculture…every day.” Annual convention of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting (NAFB) in Kansas City, Missouri. Information: www.nafb.com
November 9-12, 2011
“Innovative approaches for agricultural knowledge management: global extension experiences.” Conference of the International Society of Extension Education, New Delhi, India. Information: http://inseeworld.com/conference.htm
November 15-18, 2011
“Innovations in extension and advisory services.” International conference in Nairobi, Kenya. Sponsored by a variety of national, regional and international partners. Information: http://extensionconference2011.cta.int

“Bless the farm journals.” We close this issue of ACDC News with a tribute to the farm press. A government official expressed it during August, 1932 – and we think the essence of it continues to resonate today, globally:

“Bless the farm journals. I take a lot of them and I read them all. It is a great relief to turn from my daily paper, filled as it is with robberies, murders and the exploitation of human folly, to the columns of these farm papers, filled with reading as pure as the running brooks and as full of meat as a coconut is full of milk. We owe much to the progressive, up-to-date farm press.”

We welcome your thoughts on this front. Please send them to us at docctr@library.illinois.edu

Best regards and good searching.

ACDC News – Issue 11-15

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

Issue 11-15

Excellent global conference of agricultural journalists. Hearty thanks to members of the Canadian Farm Writers’ Federation for hosting an excellent 2011 Congress of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ) in Ontario this month.

ACDC associates Karlie Elliott Bowman and Jim Evans were among those who took part. We in the Center are pleased to support the professional development mission of IFAJ in two special ways. During the past five years we have prepared and coordinated dozens of features for posting in the Professional Development section of the IFAJ website. Also, during the past year the Center has coordinated what is now the monthly IFAJ newsletter, with Karlie serving as editor.

Interested in an overview of this lively, informative IFAJ Congress? Check out the IFAJ website and the IFAJ Congress website . Some of the presentations will become part of the ACDC collection.

Four core challenges to Extension . We have added to the ACDC collection a presentation from the 2010 Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development. Magdalena L. Blum of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations emphasized four core challenges to extension and advisory services:

Provide tailored advice, not a method or technology “fix.” Diverse clients and situations require tailored advice and a menu of options.
Increase equity and accountability. This involves pluralism, “breaking with gender and wealth biases,” and stakeholder involvement and empowerment.
Address human resource constraints. New skills are needed, educational levels are dropping and agricultural education institutions are in a serious state of decline.
Generate sustainable, effective investments and financing mechanisms, including public commitment to reach the poor.

You can view the visual presentation here .

Will better understanding of gene technology improve public acceptance of it? Not likely, according to results of a recent study reported in Science Communication . Research in Switzerland led researchers Melanie Connor and Michael Siegrist to conclude: “Based on our results, we have serious doubts as to whether educating the public about gene technology or gene technology modules in biology teaching would result in higher levels of acceptance of this technology.” Three main factors appeared as important in predicting people’s acceptance of gene technology applications:

Their perception of benefits of the particular application
Their perception of risks of the particular application
Their trust in regulating institutions

This does not mean that the public should not be informed about gene technology, the researchers added. “Providing information is necessary and may reduce misconceptions.”

View the abstract here . Check with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu for help in gaining full-text access.

“Surprisingly, potato farmers are using more electronic technology than university students.” That report came recently from two University of Idaho researchers. They surveyed 215 persons in four groups – two classes of agriculture college students and two groups of potato growers who attended educational programs. Regression analyses of responses about awareness and use of 21 electronic technologies showed that:

Potato growers were more aware of electronic technologies than were the students.
After accounting for participant age and the influence of other explanatory variables, growers used 3.5 more of the 21 technologies than the students.
A person’s choice of news source and reading for pleasure can be indicators of electronic technology use.

Authors of the report offered six implications for Extension practitioners.

Issues facing journalists in rural northwestern Pakistan. “The state of journalism in FATA” is the title of a conference report we added recently to the ACDC collection. The Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) includes seven tribal agencies and six adjacent frontier regions in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. Most of the largely rural population depends on forestry, livestock and crops for subsistence. This report describes the Tribal Union of Journalists (TUJ), which “has struggled for the protection of journalists in an area where press laws do not exist.” The report summarizes a consultative dialogue among national and TUJ journalists to:

Explore the present state of the media in the tribal areas and issues that journalists face
Strengthen linkages between the national and tribal journalists
Discuss how journalism can promote democracy, human rights and development in the region

A second Dark Age coming – when the digital data die. One of the communications books we reviewed recently has no special agriculture dimension. However, being especially interested in information to help “feed the future,” we took interest in Dark Ages II: when the digital data die .

The United States, said author Bryan Bergeron, “is poised to enter a second Dark Ages – a time when what we leave behind will be viewed as negligible compared to the previous centuries. Although the causes are very different from those that precipitated Europe’s Dark Ages, we are gambling…”

He was referring, of course, to the fragility and limited lifetimes of media platforms, machines, infrastructure, software and data – even microfilm, the current standard for archival purposes. Risks of information management and preservation easily keep us up at night, even as we mirror approaches of the University Library system of which we are a part.

You can read a review of the book here .

Communicator activities approaching

October 15, 2011
Deadline for submitting research and professional papers for the Agricultural Communication Section, Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists conference to take place in Birmingham, Alabama, February 4-7, 2012. Information: http://sites.google.com/a/extension.org/saasagcomm “Call for Papers for 2012 Meeting”
November 9-11, 2011
“Insight for agriculture…every day.” Annual convention of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting (NAFB) in Kansas City, Missouri. Information: www.nafb.com
November 9-12, 2011
“Innovative approaches for agricultural knowledge management: global extension experiences.” Conference of the International Society of Extension Education, New Delhi, India. Information: http://inseeworld.com/conference.htm
November 15-18, 2011
“Innovations in extension and advisory services.” International conference in Nairobi, Kenya. Sponsored by a variety of national, regional and international partners. Information: http://extensionconference2011.cta.int

More rural humor floating around the Web . We close this issue of ACDC News with several puns showing an agricultural tinge. Did you launch these on the Internet?

The fattest king in King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.
A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.
Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

Best regards and good searching.

ACDC News – Issue 11-14

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

Eight newly-posted 2010 journal articles about agricultural communications. Here are eight journal articles now available online, in full text, from the Journal of Applied Communications :

“Conversations with gatekeepers: an exploratory study of agricultural publication editors’ decisions to publish risk coverage” by Katie M. Abrams and Courtney Meyers.
“A little birdie told me about agriculture: best practices and future uses of Twitter in agricultural communications” by Katie Allen, Katie Abrams, Courtney Meyers and Alyx Schultz
“Stiffening strategies: a 20-year review of agricultural journalist experiences in the publication-reader-advertiser triad” by Stephen Banning, Jim Evans, Owen Roberts and Karen Simon
“Influence of subjective norms and communication preferences on grain farmers’ attitudes toward organic and non-organic farming” by Kelsey Hall and Emily Rhoades.
“Feeding the debate: a qualitative framing analysis of organic food news media coverage” by Courtney Meyers and Katie Abrams
“Competencies needed by agricultural communications undergraduates: an industry perspective” by A. Christian Morgan
“Examining JAC : an analysis of the scholarly progression of the Journal of Applied Communications ” by Traci L. Naile, J. Tanner Robertson and D. Dwayne Cartmell II
“Identifying adoption barriers in organizational rhetoric: a response to the strategic plan for the National Animal Identification System” by Shari R. Veil

You can read these articles in Volume 94, Issues 1-4.

“Cooking is like a hobby for me.” Forty percent of 3,163 adults interviewed in a 2010 probability sampling throughout the United Kingdom agreed with that statement. Most (68 percent) said they enjoy cooking and preparing food. Among other findings of this extensive survey for the Food Standards Agency:

21 percent placed all food groups in their recommended proportions on the “Eatwell Plate” (a pictorial representation of what a healthy balanced diet should consist of).
99 percent thought that eating fruit and vegetables is very or fairly important for a healthy lifestyle.
40 percent said they did not know the recommended maximum daily intake of salt.

You can read full details of findings in this 90-page report .

Persistence of top-down communicating for development. “We remain surprised…by the persistence of the top-down, ‘managerial’ perspective in development research,” said Renee Houston and Michele H. Jackson in a 2009 book we have added to the ACDC collection. The book is Development communication: reframing the role of the media. In their chapter they examined the relationship between technology and the context in which it exists.

“Research across disciplines generally acknowledges the biases, assumptions, and values that lie behind any development technology,” they noted. These technologies may be material in nature, they observed, but “are not ahistorical, acontextual and value neutral.”

Check with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu if you would like help in gaining access to this book, or to thousands of other ACDC documents about development communication.

Interdisciplinary teaching helps horticulture students learn communication. A recent article in the Journal of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Education tells about a successful cross-discipline English course at Iowa State University. It was developed by English teachers, horticulture teachers and librarians. Together, they helped horticulture students comprehend the significance of finding information sources, evaluating information and communicating effectively. Authors concluded: “Assessment data and focus group discussions strongly validate students’ appreciation for an interdisciplinary approach to teaching communication and information literacy skills within the discipline.” (Devi Annamalai)

You can read the article here .

Using information technologies to identify rural food deserts. We hear more about “food deserts” in inner cities than in rural areas. However, we’ve added to the ACDC collection a recent article in Applied Geography about identifying food deserts in the primarily rural state of Vermont. Researchers Jesse McEntee and Julian Agyeman applied an innovative geographic information systems approach that identified 12 census tracts (equivalent to 4.5 percent of the state population) with inadequate geographic food access. Residents in those areas were a mean distance of 13.5 miles from food retailers.

“The interplays between geographic, economic and informational access dictate how people access food,” the authors observed. (To access this article, please copy and paste this URL into your web browser: http://www.ruralgrocery.org/research/McEntee_&_Agyeman%202009.pdf )

Communicator activities approaching.

October 15, 2011
Deadline for submitting research and professional papers for the Agricultural Communication Section, Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists conference to take place in Birmingham, Alabama, February 4-7, 2012. Information: http://sites.google.com/a/extension.org/saasagcomm “Call for Papers for 2012 Meeting”
November 9-11, 2011
“Insight for agriculture…every day.” Annual convention of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting (NAFB) in Kansas City, Missouri. Information: www.nafb.com
November 9-12, 2011
“Innovative approaches for agricultural knowledge management: global extension experiences.” Conference of the International Society of Extension Education, New Delhi, India. Information: http://inseeworld.com/conference.htm
November 15-18, 2011
“Innovations in extension and advisory services.” International conference in Nairobi, Kenya. Sponsored by a variety of national, regional and international partners. Information: http://extensionconference2011.cta.int

Memorable rural writing . We end this issue of ACDC News with the closing stanza of a poem by Henry Lawson, one of Australia’s best-loved poets and storytellers. In his later years, he remembered one of his boyhood haunts in the goldfield area of New South Wales.

And I stood by that creek, ere the sunset grew cold,
When the leaves of the sheoaks are traced on the gold,
And I thought of the old things, and I thought of old folks,
Till I sighed in my heart to the sigh of the oaks;
For the years waste away like the waters that leak
Through the pebbles and sand of Eurunderee Creek.

You can read the poem here .

Best regards and good searching.

ACDC News – Issue 11-13

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

What “local” means to radio listeners – and how they value it . Researchers Gayane Torosyan and Charles Munro found good news for local, terrestrial radio in their recently reported research among U.S. listeners. Using focus groups and a national online listener survey, they shed light on the concept of “local” and on where local radio fits into the changing media landscape. Among the findings reported in this article in the Journal of Radio and Audio Media :

Most listeners defined “local news” as hometown (26 percent) or regional (35 percent), not statewide (9 percent).
At least half of all survey respondents named these features of local radio as “very important:” speed and reliability of emergency information, music choices, caring about listeners and friendly personalities.
They considered these features least important: covering local high school sports, offering contests and prizes, and “celebrity” radio personalities.
Most (90 percent) of the residents of small towns and rural areas expressed the same general programming preferences as residents of larger communities, giving top preference to local news, weather and traffic, with music second.
Some 90 percent of all respondents predicted that in the future they will spend the same amount of time or even more listening to their local radio stations.

View the abstract here .

Check with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu for help in gaining full-text access.

“China gives press more freedom – for food safety.” An Associated Press news report we have added to the ACDC collection explains that “China’s usually strict censors are allowing the press more latitude to help it monitor a food industry long riddled with problems.” Reporter Alexa Olesen described the shift as leadership response to the scope of China’s food safety problem and a recognition that government inspectors alone are not going to be able to tackle it.

Broadband gaps in rural America remain significant. A June 2011 update from the Federal Communications Commission reported that the broadband deployment and adoption gaps in rural areas “remain significant.” For example:

Only 21.7 percent of all Americans live in rural areas, but 72.5 percent of the 26.2 million Americans that still lack access to fixed broadband services live there.
Twenty-eight percent of rural Americans lack access to fixed broadband at three Mbps/768kbps or faster service. Only three percent lack access in non-rural areas.

You can view this 29-page report we have added to the ACDC collection.

Communicators helping preserve experiences of pioneers and institutional memory . Thanks to Gene Hettel of the International Rice Research Institute for alerting us to a significant oral history project on which he and his associates are working. He is editor and head of Communication and Publications Services at IRRI.

“I too am interested in oral history,” Gene explains, referring to our recent report about Natalie Daily Federer’s oral history project that involves agricultural communicators. During the past five years he and his associates have been conducting a continuing project to capture IRRI’s institutional memory by video. They have recorded around 100 hours of interviews with more than 55 pioneers of IRRI, ranging across directors, researchers and their families, rice growers and others. The oral history project is hooked to the 50th anniversary of IRRI last year.

You can read, view and hear some of these valuable resources about the work and lives of rice pioneers here .

More agricultural communications journal articles available online. Here are eight articles now available online in full text from 2009 issues of the Journal of Applied Communications :

“Before it hits the fan: pre-crisis beef producer information source preferences” by Marcus A. Ashlock, D. Dwayne Cartmell II and James G. Leising
“Agroterrorism and the implications of uncertainty reduction theory for agricultural communicators” by Marcus A. Ashlock, James G. Leising and D. Dwayne Cartmell II

“Research themes, authors and methodologies in the Journal of Applied Communications : a ten-year overview” by Leslie D. Edgar, Tracy Rutherford and Gary E. Briers
“Student publications’ place in the agricultural communication curriculum” by Kelsey Hall, Emily Rhoades and Robert Agunga
“Service learning: a case study in an agricultural communications course” by Danna B. Kellemen, D. Dwayne Cartmell II and Shelly Peper Sitton.
“Editor preferences for the use of scientific information in livestock publications” by Traci L. Naile and D. Dwayne Cartmell II
“A semiotic analysis of biotechnology and food safety images in Time , Newsweek and U. S. News & World Report ” by Jenn Norwood Tolbert and Tracy Rutherford
“Impact of reporter work role identity on news story source selection: implications for coverage of agricultural crises” by Judith McIntosh White and Tracy Rutherford

You can read these articles in Volume 93, Issues 1-4.

Communicator activities approaching.

September 14-18, 2011
“Experience new world agriculture.” 2011 Congress of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists in Guelph, Canada, and Niagara Falls. Information: http://www.ifaj2011.com
November 9-11, 2011
“Insight for agriculture…every day.” Annual convention of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting (NAFB) in Kansas City, Missouri. Information: www.nafb.com
November 9-12, 2011
“Innovative approaches for agricultural knowledge management: global extension experiences.” Conference of the International Society of Extension Education, New Delhi, India. Information: http://inseeworld.com/conference.htm
November 15-18, 2011
“Innovations in extension and advisory services.” International conference in Nairobi, Kenya. Sponsored by a variety of national, regional and international partners. Information: http://extensionconference2011.cta.int

Want to lower your cholesterol? Do some affectionate writing. We close this issue of ACDC News with surprising results reported in Human Communication Research . College student participants in experimental groups wrote about their affection for significant friends, relatives and/or romantic partners for 20 minutes on three separate occasions over a five-week period. Those in control groups wrote about innocuous topics. At the end of the five-week period those in the experimental group had experienced statistically significant reductions in total cholesterol.

View the abstract here . Check with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu for help in gaining full-text access.

Best regards and good searching.

ACDC News – Issue 11-12

Posted on July 20, 2011 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

Issue 11-12

On a stand-alone basis fear, shock or sensationalism may promote verbal expressions and general feelings of concern.
However, shock and sensationalism overwhelmingly have a negative impact on active engagement with climate change. They tend to disempower and distance people from it.
That is, unless representations are set in a context within which individuals are situated and to which they can relate.

You can read the paper here .

Creative way to educate about nature, feature public art and boost tourism. We have added to the ACDC collection a report from the Journal of Extension about an award-winning scavenger hunt that combines science education, public art and tourism. It’s called the “Clam Trail,” an Extension Service effort in support of the Barnegat Bay Shellfish Restoration Program in New Jersey. This sample of “edutainment” helps capture public attention and involve families, residents and visitors of all ages, businesses and civic organizations in enjoyable ways as they learn and interact.

Research reports recently made available online, in full text . Here are four agricultural communications articles that are now available online from the Journal of Applied Communications . This journal is published by the Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences (ACE). It changed recently from print to electronic format with open access:

“‘The stuff you need out here’: a semiotic case study analysis of an agricultural company’s advertisements” by Emily B. Rhoades and Tracy Irani
“Photo-elicitation as a method of assessing village needs for extension planning” by Lulu Rodriguez and Denise Bjelland
“Penchant for print; media strategies in communicating agricultural information” by Amanda Ruth-McSwain
“To bother or not to bother? Media relationship development strategies of agricultural communication professionals” by Amanda Ruth-McSwain and Ricky Telg

You can read these articles in Issue 3/4 of Volume 92.

Claude Gifford Collection now processed. Many agricultural journalists and communicators throughout the U.S, and beyond, are acquainted with Claude Gifford. Recipient of the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Agricultural Editors’ Association, this farm boy from a poor hill farm in northern Illinois contributed to his profession with distinction for a half century. Among other parts of his career, he served on the editorial staff of Farm Journal for 23 years, including responsibilities for the editorial page. In 1971 he became Director of Information for the U. S. Department of Agriculture where he served for more than 20 years on a personal level with nine Secretaries of Agriculture.

Claude’s extensive professional collection is now part of the University of Illinois Archives. Materials in it extend broadly across the work and role of journalism and communications in agriculture during the 20th century. His personal reports range from “What it’s like to be ignored” to “The spy who lives next door.” These materials represent a valuable resource during the years ahead for students, teachers, researchers, professionals and others interested in effective agricultural journalism and communications. Online, you can view the detailed finding aid that describes contents of the Gifford Collection.

Historical view of “soft” and “hard” networks in New Zealand. For 20 years Janet Toland of Victoria University has examined the interplay between the soft networks created by social capital and the hard networks created by information and communications technologies. She studied this relationship in one urban and one rural region of New Zealand between 1985 and 2005.

Findings reported in a recent research paper show a clear linear progression in terms of hard networks. For example, organizations became more interconnected through mechanisms such as alliances, mergers, clusters and trade networks. However, no clear linear development could be seen during the 20 years, in terms of soft networks. The author noted a circular pattern in which the same issues may be revisited a number of times over the years. Some rural-urban differences were apparent regarding both types of networks.

Really speaking up for agriculture (125 years ago). The National Farmers’ Alliance attracted some thundering advocates during the 1890s, according to Clarence Poe in his book, My first 80 years . Among the most picturesque and sensational, he said, was Mary Ellen Lease, an Irish-born lawyer in Kansas.

“Her slogan, ‘Farmers must raise less corn and more hell,’ caught on and spread like a forest fire. With a powerful voice, deep and resonant, its effect startling and compelling, as was said at that time, ‘she hurls sentences as Jove hurls thunderbolts.'”

Let us know at docctr@library.illinois.edu if you would like to learn more and don’t have access to the book.

Communicator activities approaching.

August 15, 2011
Deadline for entries: print and electronic journalists and media specialists of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States. “Innovations and Advisory Services,” in Nairobi, Kenya, during November. Information: http://extensionconference2011.cta.int/sites/default/files/Journalist-Call-for-Submissions-Ext-Conf.pdf
August 30-September 3, 2011
20th European Seminar on Extension Education in Helsinki, Finland. Information: http://esee-2011.blogspot.com/
September 14-18, 2011
“Experience new world agriculture.” 2011 Congress of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists in Guelph, Canada, and Niagara Falls. Information: http://www.ifaj2011.com
November 9-11, 2011
“Insight for agriculture…every day.” Annual convention of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting (NAFB) in Kansas City, Missouri. Information: www.nafb.com
November 9-12, 2011
“Innovative approaches for agricultural knowledge management: global extension experiences.” Conference of the International Society of Extension Education, New Delhi, India. Information: http://inseeworld.com/conference.htm
November 15-18, 2011
“Innovations in extension and advisory services.” International conference in Nairobi, Kenya. Sponsored by a variety of national, regional and international partners. Information: http://extensionconference2011.cta.int

Yes, better left unsaid. We close this issue of ACDC News nodding in agreement with rural writer Lee Pitts who recently described in Progressive Cattleman what happened during a livestock auction in Utah.

Bidding was slow on a particular horse. A friend of the owner stood up in the crowd and said, “You’re just penalizing this horse because of the way he acted in the preview. He’s not that way normally.” The auctioneer was unable to get another bid.

Best regards and good searching.

ACDC News – Issue 11-11

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

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

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

” Farmers show increased on farm action to combat climate change ” (Australia)
” Attitudes of livestock farmers and sensitivity of livestock farming systems to drought conditions in the French Alps ” (France)
“Farmers’ attitudes towards environmental change, particularly global warming, and the adjustment of crop mix and farm management” (UK) View the abstract here . Check with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu for help in gaining full-text access.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Communicator activities approaching.

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

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

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

Best regards and good searching.

ACDC News – Issue 11-10

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

Consumers wary of advice from food experts . Those who communicate with consumers about food can take note of findings from a 2010 “Food and You” survey in the United Kingdom. Responses from more than 3,000 adults across the United Kingdom showed them holding mixed opinions about food experts. For example:

“I am fed up with experts telling me what I should eat.” (47 percent)

“Experts contradict each other over what foods are good for you.” (73 percent)

You can review these and other findings from the 2011 Food Standards Agency report here .

Prime issues facing communicators in animal agriculture. An economic analysis of animal agriculture, 1999-2009, for the U. S. United Soybean Board revealed five issues that emerged repeatedly, across multiple states. They are “issues with which state agricultural organizations are grappling – and will likely continue to face – in the years ahead.”

Raw milk legislation
Animal welfare legislation
“Locavore” driven demand for small-scale, local processing
Action on climate change/pollution
Illegal immigration/labor issues

Effective communications is central to success as the animal agriculture industry addresses these issues at local to global levels. You can read the full 2010 report here .

Rural areas to benefit most from mobile telephony. Authors of a 2008 World Bank report offered that conclusion after examining the role of mobile telephones in sustainable poverty reduction among the rural poor. They identified studies throughout the world that documented how the mobile phone can:

Reduce negative aspects (such as corruption, exploitation, crime, and high and inequitable prices)
Increase positive aspects (such as education, employment and entrepreneurial opportunities, productivity, business expansion, tax revenue, cost saving, health services, disaster relief and social cohesion).

You can read the full report here .

Tips for extension professionals – on walking beyond the comfort zone. A journal article we added recently to the ACDC collection from Australia suggested that agricultural and natural resource extension personnel can improve their effectiveness by increasing empathy with their constituents. Pennie Scott identified several fronts for attention:

Learn, experience and practice risk-taking, “a situation the self-employed face almost every day in their operating environment.” Explore the unknown in unison, she advised, as learning partners with an attitude of expecting the unexpected.
Be sensitive to women’s ways of knowing, indigenous ways of knowing, radical ways of knowing, ecological ways of knowing and emotional intelligence.
Appreciate differences in the language of managing natural resources and in the intimate relationship with the land.

The agricultural journalist’s higher calling. Writing interesting and informative articles about agriculture may be the agricultural journalist’s role, says Canadian rural journalist Henry Heald. However, he adds, “giving people the tools to make informed decisions about life should be the vocation of every journalist.”

Now the longest-serving member of the Canadian Farm Writers’ Federation, Heald offered these and other career perspectives in a recent issue of The Farm Journalist published by the Federation.

Congratulations to Paul Hixson , an Agricultural Communications Documentation Center associate who has been instrumental in the direction and development of it. Earlier this month Paul was named interim chief information officer for the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois. He retired last August as assistant dean and director of information technology and communication services for the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences. His experiences will help him oversee campus efforts to coordinate a highly complex, dynamic communications system. You can read the news report here .

Communicator activities approaching.

July 3-7, 2011
“Sustainable value chain agriculture for food security and economic development.” 2011 World Conference of the Association for International Agricultural and Extension Education (AIAEE) in Windhoek, Namibia. Information: http://www.aiaee.org
July 23-27, 2011
“Jazz it up!” Agricultural Media Summit involving the American Agricultural Editors’ Association, Livestock Publications Council, Agri Council of American Business Media and Agricultural Communicators of Tomorrow in New Orleans, Louisiana USA. Information: http://www.agmediasummit.com
August 30-September 3, 2011
20th European Seminar on Extension Education in Helsinki, Finland. Information: http://esee-2011.blogspot.com/
September 14-18, 2011
“Experience new world agriculture.” 2011 Congress of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists in Guelph, Canada, and Niagara Falls. Information: http://www.ifaj2011.com

Fearful of writing and tending to trifles. We close this issue of ACDC News with a story told by Xu Bing in the journal, Visual Communication .

“The story goes that, in ancient times, when there were no written characters and no drawing, Cang Jie created writing. The heavens were so frightened that they rained millet, and the ghosts were so terrified that they wailed throughout the night. Heaven feared that from that point onward people would attend to trifles and neglect essentials, that they would abandon agriculture for the petty personal profits to be gained from deploying ink and manipulating language. Needless to say, if the heart and mind became thus perverted, the stomach would go empty. The millet was sent from the heavens not only as a practical precaution, but also as a warning. Thus comes the phrase ‘to frighten heaven and earth and make the spirits cry’.”

Best regards and good searching.

Please pass along your reactions, suggestions and ideas. Feel free to invite our help as you search for information. And please suggest (or send) agricultural communications documents we might add to this unique collection. We welcome them in hard copy (sent to Ag Com Documentation Center, 510 LIAC, 1101 S. Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801) or in electronic format sent to docctr@library.illinois.edu .

ACDC News – Issue 11-09

Posted on May 31, 2011 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

How new mobile media are fitting into schedules and activities . Results of a recent diary-based study help reveal how U.S. adults are using their mobile communications devices. Among the findings reported:

Newer mobile communications media and traditional news media “occupy different niches within the news domain.”
Traditional media exhibit a familiar time-space pattern – newspapers in the morning, radio during morning and afternoon drive time, and television or cable news in the evening.
Multimedia mobile and cell phones serve needs of consumers “for news and information when they are on the move in space and time.”

Authors encouraged research involving audiences living in urban and rural areas.

You can read the abstract of this New Media and Society article here . Check with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu for help in gaining full-text access.

What? Buy advertising to announce Extension programming? Tight budgets make that idea sound unworkable. However, a team of extension educators in Idaho tested the approach and found that paid advertising can be a good value for increasing a return to their invested time and effort. Among the findings of their research, using comparison pairs:

Enrollments in programs that were promoted using free outlets only: 4.5 persons
Enrollments in programs promoted by paid advertising: 31.8 persons

“A particularly striking contrast was a program on osteoporosis, which was canceled for lack of enrollment without paid advertising, but drew 64 attendees when it was advertised in the newspaper.” More .

India tackles language challenges in using the Internet. Access to the Internet often falls far short of serving rural residents. A recent research report, “Role of ICTs in India rural communities,” emphasized that most people in developing countries cannot read and understand most of the English-centric Internet content. Author Siriginidi Subba Rao reported that the adult literacy rate in India is about 59 percent, with the female literacy rate at about 47 percent. India officially recognizes 18 languages, each having a different character set. About two-thirds of India residents speak Hindi and less than 5 percent understand English. Lack of standardization of software code for major Indian languages creates interoperability problems between programs involving distinct codes.

You can read about challenges and current efforts to address them in this 2009 report.

Signs of “general confusion” about functional foods. In a survey reported recently, young adults in southern Italy revealed what researchers described as general confusion about the term “functional food.” One-third of the sampled young consumers said they had never heard the term used. After researchers explained what functional food was, 12 percent of the respondents with science backgrounds were enthusiastic about the capabilities of such foods, 78 percent were trusting and 10 percent mistrustful. Among those with humanities backgrounds, 2 percent were enthusiastic, 38 percent were trusting, 46 percent mistrustful and 10 percent incredulous.

Findings also revealed how the channels through which these young consumers learned about functional foods appeared to influence willingness to accept them.

Two routes – two outcomes – in constructing rural identity. Two case studies in rural Queensland, Australia, examined efforts to use rural mythologies (“The Outback,” in this case) for economic or social benefit.

One project involved an online discussion group, welink , for rural women. It grew on the basis of grassroots interaction and shared stories (somewhat along the line of the party-line telephone system) and proactive solutions to isolation.
The “Bushlink Internet Café” involved a small community in remote western Queensland. It was launched with high visibility as a collaboration of state government, private enterprise and a proactive, energetic community. However, within two years the café had closed, “mired in controversy and argument.”

Check with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu if you are interested in gaining access to this conference paper.

Why consumers hesitate to buy meat and poultry at farmers markets. Researchers Lauren Gwin and Larry Lev used Rapid Market Assessment “dot” surveys among more than 1,100 consumers in Oregon to address this matter. They found that 49 percent of all respondents had never purchased any meat or poultry at any farmers market. Responses identified seven main reasons, topped by “price” (28 percent), “don’t eat it” (19 percent) and “inconvenient” (17 percent). They also revealed the price premium those shoppers would pay for meat and poultry at the market versus “non-local” meat and poultry at the supermarket. Authors of the report suggested four ways to encourage more meat and poultry sales at farmers markets.

Communicator activities approaching

June 10-14, 2011
Joint meeting of the National Extension Technology Conference (NETC) and the Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences (ACE) in Denver, Colorado USA. Information: http://www.aceweb.org
June 19-22, 2011
“Caliente! Hot ideas for cooperative communicators.” Cooperative Communicators Association Institute in San Antonio, Texas USA. Information: http://communicators.coop
July 3-7, 2011
“Sustainable value chain agriculture for food security and economic development.” 2011 World Conference of the Association for International Agricultural and Extension Education (AIAEE) in Windhoek, Namibia. Information: http://www.aiaee.org
July 23-27, 2011
“Jazz it up!” Agricultural Media Summit involving the American Agricultural Editors’ Association, Livestock Publications Council, Agri Council of American Business Media and Agricultural Communicators of Tomorrow in New Orleans, Louisiana USA. Information: http://www.agmediasummit.com
August 30-September 3, 2011
20th European Seminar on Extension Education in Helsinki, Finland. Information: http://esee-2011.blogspot.com/
September 14-18, 2011
“Experience new world agriculture.” 2011 Congress of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists in Guelph, Canada, and Niagara Falls. Information: http://www.ifaj2011.com

Always a close call. We end this issue of ACDC News with a Spanish proverb that came to our attention recently. It helps express the mission of communicators in agriculture:

“Civilization and anarchy are only seven meals apart.”

Best regards and good searching.

Please pass along your reactions, suggestions and ideas. Feel free to invite our help as you search for information. And please suggest (or send) agricultural communications documents we might add to this unique collection. We welcome them in hard copy (sent to Ag Com Documentation Center, 510 LIAC, 1101 S. Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801) or in electronic format sent to docctr@library.illinois.edu .

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