ACDC Newsletter

How well do U.S. food exporters understand EU importers? Some shortfall appeared in recent research about trust in the fruit and vegetable trade. An international team of researchers conducted 21 interviews with importers in seven European countries and 14 interviews with exporters in the U.S. Among the findings reported in 2010:

• U.S. exporters underestimated the importance of the product as a trust-building factor, especially in terms of product inspection as an indicator of quality.
• They considered price to be the most important trust-building factor, although “this doesn’t seem to be of much importance for importers from the EU.”
• They perceived that the reputation of their product is more important, as a trust-building factor, than EU importers reported it to be.
• They placed higher value on personal relationships than did buyers in Europe.

Need help on the farm? Invite a crop mob. A special agricultural use of social media got attention in a USA Today article during the growing season last year. Reporter Judy Keen described a special kind of agritourism called crop mobs. The one featured in Missouri involved mostly urban volunteers who spend time working for a small-scale farmer, Chris Wimmer. In return, they learn about the food they consume and get tips about organic and sustainable farming.

Keen reported that more that 30 crop mobs have formed in the U.S. since 2008. Organizers use social media such as Facebook to enlist members and publicize gatherings.

Is the internet a better public sphere? This title of a recent article in New Media and Society introduced findings of a comparison of free, open and plural social communication in old and new media in the USA and Germany.

“No,” is the answer from authors Jürgen Gerhards and Mike S. Schäfer, even though internet communication has been expected by many to provide a better public sphere than “old” media such as newspapers, radio and television.

Their findings were based on newspaper and internet coverage involving some 1,900 articles about human genome research. Results showed “only minimal evidence to support the idea that the internet is a better communication space as compared to print media. In both media, communication is dominated by (bio- and natural) scientific actors; popular inclusion does not occur.” Authors noted that their findings parallel those reported in 2008 about coverage of genetically modified food.

How community newspapers are using social media. Publishers and editors of some community newspapers – large and small – in Kansas are embracing the community-building opportunities of Web 2.0. Les Anderson and Amy DeVault of Wichita State University reported several of those experiences at the 2009 symposium of the Huck Boyd National Center for Community Media and the National Newspaper Association Foundation: Blogging and Tweeting. Facebook accounts. YouTube. Cell phones. Citizen reporting. Finding stories. More .

List of “50 Best Farm and Agriculture Blogs.” OnlineDegrees.com, a resource for gaining degrees from accredited online colleges, recently posted this list during 2010. The 50 chosen blogs are organized within seven clusters: news and information, sustainable farming, farming big and small, international, livestock and ranching, agricultural science and agricultural politics and policy.

Lamb promotion yields $44 per dollar invested . Econometric research reported during early 2010 revealed a 44-to-1 return to promotion through the Lamb Checkoff Program of the U.S. lamb industry. Researchers explained that most of the promotion centered on consumer relations and food service activities. Print and broadcast media coverage of lamb chefs (“lambassadors”), satellite media tours, feature pages for local newspapers and media kits were among the methods used. Researchers concluded that lamb promotion has tended to enhance the demand for lamb over the years, despite a relatively low level of investment. More .

On being transparent and up-front with the food customer . Fedele Bauccio, chief executive officer of Bon Appétite Management Company, called for “a transparent dialogue with our customers” when he spoke at the USDA Agricultural Outlook Forum 2010. These are among the questions he said the dialogue should address:

• Where does my food come from?
• Who picks our agriculture? What is the human cost of feeding America?
• What is your business carbon footprint?
• Is the food safe?
• What are the environmental effects and animal welfare aspects of concentrated animal feeding operations?

Communicator activities approaching

February 21-22, 2011
“The Perfect Ten.” Southern Region Workshop for members of the Cooperative Communicators Association (CCA) in Charleston, South Carolina USA. “To enhance skills in writing, photography, layout and design, social media, creativity, media relations and much more – all presented in bite-sized, top-ten lists!”
Information: http://www.communicators.coop/events/11/SRWflier.pdf

February 23-25, 2011
Annual meeting of the Agricultural Relations Council (ARC) in Fort Myers, Florida USA.
Information: http://www.agrelationscouncil.org/

April 13-15, 2011″
Harvesting Ideas 2011.” Conference of the National Agri-Marketing Association (NAMA) in Kansas City, Missouri USA.
Information: http://www.nama.org/amc

Rural community art around the globe. We close this issue of ACDC News with some creative rural community art that came to our attention recently. The Western Australia organization, Bank of IDEAS (Initiatives for the Development of Enterprising Actions and Strategies), is sharing these images online. You will see community art that ranges across “Bulls” in New Zealand, edible landscapes in Malaysia, farm art in America, and memorial trees and interesting toilets in Australia.

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.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. This is a document center and service, not merely an online citation database.

Welcome to the first 2011 issue of ACDC News .

We hope you enjoy a New Year of news and updates from the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center based at the University of Illinois. What began 30 years ago as a small teaching file for our agricultural communications faculty members has become a unique international resource and service. What you read in ACDC News only scratches the surface of information flowing daily into this online-searchable collection. It now includes nearly 36,000 documents that involve communications aspects of agriculture, food, feed, fiber, renewable energy, natural resources and rural development in more than 170 countries.

Thanks for your encouragement and support.

The Center has no huge budget. But it has an increasingly important mission and several valuable resources. Among them: a dedicated staff, an exceptional University Library resource and the inspiration of you who use the collection and help strengthen it. We look forward to a new year of identifying and providing information that helps you communicate effectively and grow professionally wherever you work in this broad, dynamic, vital field of interest. And we look forward to being in touch with you.

Persons talking — even more important in an electronic era?

Seventy years ago Paul Lazarsfeld and his colleagues examined the impact of personal influence (communications among people) on voting decisions. They found that the mass media created awareness but exerted far less direct impact than expected, compared with conversations among local residents. These insights launched thousands of studies about the two-step flow of information, including the diffusion and adoption literature of agriculture-related communications.

Does this pattern hold true today, when residents have access to an avalanche of information flowing through the Internet and related electronic media? The answer is “yes,” according to a research report presented at the 2009 meeting of the International Society for Political Psychology in Dublin, Ireland. Researchers analyzed how Americans acquire and use information these days about four topics: food and cooking, health, climate change and political affairs. They observed that greater information access appears to make interpersonal communication even more important. They concluded that gathering information cannot be separated from talking about it. More

Passionate about rural reporting .

An inspiring personal story about the importance, mission, challenges and satisfactions of rural reporting came into the ACDC collection recently via NewsLab. Rhonda McBride of KTUU-TV, Anchorage, Alaska, wrote the account for aspiring young journalists.

This 2007 Journalism Ethics Fellow at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies explained how she became a reporter by accident. Nearly a decade of cross-cultural broadcasting in one of Alaska’s most remote communities, Bethel, helped her “come to terms with what is most essential in life” and feel grateful for issues of true significance to cover. It’s a challenge to tell the stories of people nobody cares about – and give people a reason to care, she said. She acknowledged that beginning journalists may want to start out as anchors in big markets chasing big stories. However, “…in so many ways, the stories are bigger in small communities.” More

Two approaches to small-community newspapering in dynamic times.

We have added to the ACDC collection two case reports about newspapering in small, rural communities. The reports were presented at the 2009 Newspapers and Community-Building Symposium in Mobile, Alabama.

• Resurrecting one. Starting The Valley Press after a chain had closed four local weeklies in the Farmington Valley of Connecticut was “less daunting than some might expect,” explained publisher Ed Gunderson. It’s a free weekly that emphasizes sports, school events, local government and activities involving children. More
• A not-for-profit, cooperative approach. Patricia Berg reported on a Minnesota bi-weekly, Sunfish Gazette , which a tough group of volunteers launched in 2005 after their local paper folded. It was printed and sent free, with pdf images of each issue posted online. A financial base of small donations was not able to sustain it beyond three years. More

Farmer-to-farmer videos conveyed ideas better than conventional workshops.

Stand-alone video shows proved more powerful than conventional one-day community workshops in conveying new ideas about integrated pest management.

This outcome from research in northwestern Bangladesh was reported during September at an international conference in Switzerland. Researchers A. H. Chowdhury, P. Van Mele and M. Hauser observed that video allows better explanation of underlying biological and physical processes and stimulates learning about local innovative pest management practices. Farmer to farmer learning plays an important role and must be strengthened in the future, they concluded. More

Communicator activities approaching

January 2011
Call for papers for a session, “Information systems for indigenous knowledge in agriculture,” at the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, August 13-18, 2011. Information: www.ifla.org/en/news/agricultural-libraries-sig-call-for-papers

January 24, 2011
Deadline for research papers, research proposals, theses and dissertations to be presented at the ACE/NETC annual meeting (Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences, and National Extension Technology Conference). It takes place in Denver, Colorado, June 10-14, 2011.
Information: Amanda Ruth-McSwain at ruthmcswaina@cofc.edu

February 5-8, 2011
Meeting of the Agricultural Communications Section of the Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists (SAAS) in Corpus Christi, Texas USA.
Information: http://www.saasinc.org/2011-CorpusChristi/WelcomePg.asp

February 21-22, 2011
“The Perfect Ten.” Southern Region Workshop for members of the Cooperative Communicators Association (CCA) in Charleston, South Carolina USA. “To enhance skills in writing, photography, layout and design, social media, creativity, media relations and much more – all presented in bite-sized, top-ten lists!”
Information: http://www.communicators.coop/events/11/SRWflier.pdf

February 23-25, 2011
Annual meeting of the Agricultural Relations Council (ARC) in Fort Myers, Florida USA.
Information: http://www.agrelationscouncil.org/

Headline writer’s mental lapse.

We close this issue of ACDC News with one of those headlines that perhaps any of us might have written during the late Friday afternoon of a hectic week:

“Firm recalls sautéed children”

Here’s what the announcement actually involved. More than 14,000 pounds of sautéed chicken products were recalled because they contained an undeclared allergen, whey. Thanks to Douglas Powell of Food Safety Network for calling our attention to it. Read it here .

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.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. This is a document center and service, not merely an online citation database.

Holiday and year-end greetings to you from all of us in the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center here at the University of Illinois. We have thoroughly enjoyed being in touch with you during 2010 and hope we have added in some way to your year.

Agricultural “infovation” happening around us. Peter Ballantyne, president of the International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists, used that term in a recent summary of emerging trends and issues in our field of interest. The term “infovation” emphasizes how agricultural information and communications managers need to be innovators in managing knowledge. For example, he noted how:

• Agricultural researchers become bloggers and publish websites
• Farmers form learning networks
• Extension workers build wikis
• Librarians become film-makers

You can read an abstract of this 2009 article in Information Development journal here .

Check with us at docctr@library.uiuc.edu about gaining full-text access.

Still mighty lively and ACTive at 40. Congratulations to the Agricultural Communicators of Tomorrow (ACT) organization that observed its 40th anniversary this year. Students studying agricultural journalism and agricultural communications at universities throughout the U.S. organized this student group during 1970 at a conference in Ithaca, New York. Thanks to all of the professionals and organizations that have encouraged and supported ACT members throughout these years – at campus, national and international levels.

Learn more about ACT and some current activities of members by visiting the ACT website here .

Ethical food and ethical claims that matter most to food shoppers . A new research report that we have added to the ACDC collection sheds light on ethical claims, and on how ethical concerns influence food purchases. During January, Context Marketing conducted this research involving 600 adults living in major metropolitan areas across the U.S.

One part of the study explored what consumers mean by “ethical food.” More than 90 percent identified these main features:

• Avoids harming the environment (93 percent)
• Meets high standards of safety (93 percent) and quality (91 percent)
• Uses environmentally sustainable practices (91 percent)
• Avoids inhumane treatment of farm animals (91 percent)

You can read the report here

What connects to the meaning of “ethical food”? An online response from TruffleMedia to the “ethical food” perceptions (above) raised concerns about how the word “ethical” is used. For example:

• Does it mean food produced locally?
• Is it “tied to things that are not ethics related: healthy/nutritious, trans fats, produced in USA and organically produced”?
• “If you do not produce organic food are you unethical”?

You can read this response here .

New resource about veterinary communicating . A 2010 book we added recently to the ACDC collection focuses on communications challenges that veterinarians face in their day-to-day work. Handbook of Veterinary Communication Skills by Carol Gray and Jenny Moffett provides tips and insights about activities such as:

• Consulting with clients
• Working with grief
• Dealing with delicate situations, such as euthanasia, end of life and mistakes
• Relating to media and colleagues

Check with us at docctr@library.uiuc.edu if you are interested in this book and don’t have local access to it.

Animation helps a rural UK community rally around an intimidating project. Who would have thought it possible for the Village of Skinningrove (on the east coast of England) to regenerate a jetty which had stood derelict and dangerous for many years? Two local activists would, with the help of a digital innovator, Steve Thompson. He suggested building and launching the jetty in Second Life. With a “go” signal, he recruited lots of local school children and others to create a film showing what a refurbished and reopened jetty would look like in Real Life. The film “premiered to great acclaim in February 2009” and the project effort began.

Producer Thompson described this innovative community media project in a conference paper you can read here .

You can view the film on YouTube here .

Communicator activities approaching

January 24, 2011
Deadline for research papers, research proposals, theses and dissertations to be presented at the ACE/NETC annual meeting (Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences, and National Extension Technology Conference). It takes place in Denver, Colorado, June 10-14, 2011.
Information: Amanda Ruth-McSwain at ruthmcswaina@cofc.edu

February 5-8, 2011
Meeting of the Agricultural Communications Section of the Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists (SAAS) in Corpus Christi, Texas USA.
Information: http://www.saasinc.org/2011-CorpusChristi/WelcomePg.asp

February 21-22, 2011
“The Perfect Ten.” Southern Region Workshop for members of the Cooperative Communicators Association (CCA) in Charleston, South Carolina USA. “To enhance skills in writing, photography, layout and design, social media, creativity, media relations and much more – all presented in bite-sized, top-ten lists!”
Information: http://www.communicators.coop/events/11/SRWflier.pdf

February 23-25, 2011
Annual meeting of the Agricultural Relations Council (ARC) in Fort Myers, Florida USA.
Information: http://www.agrelationscouncil.org/

New batch of favorite oxymorons . From time to time we check on oxymorons that relate to food/agriculture and communications. We close this year-end issue of ACDC News with some favorites, this time from the journalism and communications side:

• Final draft
• New and improved
• Deliberate mistake
• Brief speech
• Expressive silence

Let us know at docctr@library.uiuc.edu when you see others you would nominate.

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.

Five strategies that producers use to deal with globalizing markets. We have added to the ACDC collection a report of a large-scale study of ways in which German producers manage their farms in the face of competitive global markets. Cluster analysis identified five strategic groups in the region under survey:

• Diversifiers . Using newly developed businesses as well as primary production.
• Cooperators. Expanding farms with a cooperative, interfarm approach.
• Expanding lone fighters. Large farms acting alone to grow.
• Growth-oriented outsourcers. Looking for growth and increasingly outsourcing their farm activities.
• Precarious farms. Not cooperating and not diversifying.

You can read this report here .

50 years at WGN – and counting. The ACDC collection now includes several news articles and a one-hour radio broadcast honoring Orion Samuelson for his 50 years of agricultural broadcasting at WGN, Chicago. He reached that historic mark on September 26, a half century after being “hired on a handshake” at the age of 27 following eight years of broadcasting experience in Wisconsin.

“I was at the right place at the right time,” Orion observed during the September 26 broadcast. Many would express gratefulness for that match-up as Orion has set exemplary standards for professional practice and for communicating with millions about putting food on their tables.

You can listen to the broadcast, “The Legend Continues,” here .

More farmers reporting how they use smartphone apps. A recent article we have added to the ACDC collection from the California Farm Bureau Federation describes ways in which members are using applications for mobile smartphones and smartbooks. Here are some of the examples cited:

• Tracking water usage and managing irrigation systems
• Monitoring soil types to guide cropping and fertilizing strategies
• Recording herd information
• Measuring the distance and area of fields
• Learning the number of growing degree days or heat units for a given area
• Tracking frost and wind
• Scanning bar-code information to seek favorable prices of products
• Monitoring markets for fuel and commodity prices
• Gaining access to spreadsheets “and all sorts of stuff”

You can read the article by Christine Souza here .

Timid editorial voices . Many Kentucky newspapers have a timid editorial voice, according to research findings of Al Cross and Elizabeth Hansen, reporting at the 2008 Newspapers and Community-Building Symposium. For example, their analysis of 102 weeklies during September 2007 revealed:

• Among weeklies with circulation of 2,000 and under, 47 percent had no editorial pages during that time.
• Among all the weeklies, 38 percent of those owned independently had no editorial pages.
• Of the 74 weeklies that had editorial pages, 69 percent did not publish any locally written editorials.

You can read “Keeping quiet or taking the lead?” online.

How agricultural journalists can check the health of media in their societies. A new feature we have added from the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ) website identifies five key indicators professionals can use. The feature emphasizes that an environment of free, independent and pluralistic media is widely recognized as essential for fostering social wellbeing. “It probably is safe to say that the struggle for free expression never ends – in any society, regardless of its government’s democratic position.”

A recent report by an international expert group for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) identified five indicators that are summarized in this feature. They touch on regulatory systems, plurality and diversity of media, opportunity for free and democratic discourse, training of and support for professional journalists, and access to modern media technologies. The report also highlights several rural dimensions of media development.

You can read the feature here .

You can read the full UNESCO report here .

North American media reports about organic production – seldom negative. That is what researchers observed in a recent issue of British Food Journal that we have added to the ACDC collection. Their content analysis of 618 articles in five North American newspapers between 1999 and 2004 revealed:

• 41 percent of the articles had a neutral tone toward organic agriculture and food
• 37 percent had a positive tone
• 16 percent were mixed
• 6 percent were negative

Positive comments about organic food and agriculture centered mainly on concerns about environment, human health and food safety.

You can view an abstract of the article here .

Communicator activities approaching

February 5-8, 2011
Meeting of the Agricultural Communications Section of the Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists (SAAS) in Corpus Christi, Texas USA.
Information: http://www.saasinc.org/2011-CorpusChristi/WelcomePg.asp

February 21-22, 2011
“The Perfect Ten.” Southern Region Workshop for members of the Cooperative Communicators Association (CCA) in Charleston, South Carolina USA. “To enhance skills in writing, photography, layout and design, social media, creativity, media relations and much more – all presented in bite-sized, top-ten lists!”
Information: http://www.communicators.coop/events/11/SRWflier.pdf

February 23-25, 2011
Annual meeting of the Agricultural Relations Council (ARC) in Fort Myers, Florida USA.
Information: http://www.agrelationscouncil.org/

Creative agri-thought of the month . We close this issue of ACDC News with an expression that Ted Haller used in a recent issue of NAFB eChats , newsletter of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting:

With twinkle in eye, he passed along something “Shakespeare once said about the Cattle Market – ‘To err is human, to Moo is Bovine’.”

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.

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

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

You can read this commentary here .

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

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

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

You can read the Extension Farming Systems Journal article here .

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

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

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

“It always rains and spoils a good drought.”

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

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

The organization aims to:

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

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

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

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

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

You can review a summary of results here .

Communicator activities approaching

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

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

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

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

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

Get in touch with us when you see interesting items in the ACDC collection and can’t gain full-text access through information in the citation, or through online searching. We will help you gain access.

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

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

You can read this research report here .

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome to a new faculty associate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Communicator activities approaching

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

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

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

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

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

Get in touch with us when you see interesting items in the ACDC collection and can’t gain full-text access through information in the citation, or through online searching. We will help you gain access.

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

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

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

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

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

Among other insights from the reported research:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can read this commentary here .

Communicator activities approaching

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

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

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

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

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

Get in touch with us when you see interesting items in the ACDC collection and can’t gain full-text access through information in the citation, or through online searching. We will help you gain access.

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

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

You can read the commentary here .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can read the report here .

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

You can read the article here .

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

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

Welcome to a new ACDC associate.

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

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

Communicator activities approaching

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

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

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

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

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

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

Visit their web site here .

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

Get in touch with us when you see interesting items in the ACDC collection and can’t gain full-text access through information in the citation, or through online searching. We will help you gain access.

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

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

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

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

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

You can read this commentary here

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

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

You can review the research paper here .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can read this article here .

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

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

Communicator activities approaching

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have you shopped there yet?

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

Get in touch with us when you see interesting items in the ACDC collection and can’t gain full-text access through information in the citation, or through online searching. We will help you gain access.