ACDC Newsletter

2009-03-1

2009-02-15

2009-02-1

2009-01-15

2009-01-1

Breakdown in risk communicating – a confusing grab bag .  A research report and news release we added recently from the Produce Safety Project emphasized how “the nation’s food-safety system continues to be plagued by issues of capacity, competence and coordination.”  This analysis, reported from Georgetown University, focused on last summer’s Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak that caused illnesses in more than 1,400 persons across the nation.

It documented “dueling” public health messages from various agencies announcing the outbreak. Get unified risk communications plans in place before an outbreak, the report emphasized.

News release: Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak exposes food safety weaknesses

Posted at: http://www.producesafetyproject.org/admin/assets/files/0017.pdf

Report: Breakdown: lessons to be learned from the 2008 Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak

Posted at http://www.producesafetyproject.org/admin/assets/files/0015.pdf

Agricultural editor asks:  “Is it my job to reach the consumer?” Holly Martin, president of the American Agricultural Editors’ Association and editor of High Plains Journal , raised that question in a recent issue of AAEA ByLine newsletter.

“No,” she replied.  “I believe ag media should take a different tack.  My role is not to speak to consumers about the importance of agriculture.  My role is to speak to agriculture producers about the importance of consumers.

The author suggested that no one tells a story better than the person who experiences it.  “No matter how eloquent, my words retelling a farmer’s story would never carry the weight and impact of a farmer speaking directly to consumers.”

Title: What is our role?

Posted at http://www.ageditors.com

Sorting fact and opinion in GM reporting. A recent commentary added to the body of argument that the world should rely on experts with good credentials to evaluate the safety of genetically modified (GM) crops and food. Robert Wager of Vancouver Island University, Canada, argued that the media “can, of course, add words of caution from critics.  But it must be clear which opinions come from detailed knowledge and training, and which may be driven by other agendas.”

The author offered these suggestions to journalists:

• Talk to people trained in the field of agri-biotechnology “who actually know what the real issues are.”
• Consult regulators.  “Many countries have tight regulations on food production to ensure public safety.”
• “…stop presenting claims that we know nothing about the long-term hazards as being unique to GM foods.”

Title: GM reporting should rely on real expertise

Posted at http://www.scidev.net/en/editor-letters/gm-reporting-should-rely-on-real-expertise.html

Unique role of the Ag Com Documentation Center .  In matters such as communicating about biotechnology for food and agriculture, we in this Center use an “honest broker” approach. That is, we value, collect and provide information and perspectives of all kinds, and from all voices surrounding an issue.  If you conduct a Subject search in the ACDC search system, using the term “biotechnology,” you will find a surprisingly diverse mixture of documents and views. They range from books and peer-reviewed, scientific literature to editorials, commentaries and news releases from interest groups.

Why would we do so?  Because experience shows that opinions and hunches sometimes prove to be as important as science in the world of personal and social decision making.  In that spirit, this Center – as a public library resource – aims to increase understanding and improve human communicating and decision making by helping users “tune in” on all voices about this complex subject (and hundreds of others).

KFC – not just a chicken restaurant (in Asia). In a recent book, International public relations , Patricia A. Curtin and T. Kenn Gaither described how Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) has “set a record for fast food chain development in China since opening its first store in Beijing, China, in 1987.”  Colonel Sanders in China, Malaysia, India, and the rest of Asia looks the same as the Colonel in the United States, the authors explained.  However, they identified some dimensions of this campaign that embed KFC into cultures different from the one in which it originated.  We are adding this case report to the ACDC collection.

Title: International public relations

Check with us at docctr@library.uiuc.edu if you want to follow up on it for teaching or other uses.

Honoring the potato through beautiful photography. Year 2008 is the International Year of the Potato and skilled photographers have provided an inspiring global view of this valuable food through their entries in the World Photography Contest.  Winners were announced recently by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, coordinator of the year-long campaign.

Entries, which came from professional and amateur photographers in 90 countries, illustrated the many roles played by the potato in agriculture, the economy, food security, society and culture.  In the award-winning photos you will see images that feature biodiversity, cultivation, processing, trade, marketing, consumption and use of potatoes throughout the world.

View the winning photos at http://www.potato2008.org/en/photocontest/index.html

Communicator activities approaching

A new frontier in animal communications and genetics. We close this issue of ACDC News with a mischievous gremlin that sneaked into a recent issue of University of Chicago Magazine .  An alumnus reported having taken a driving safari in South Africa with friends and offspring.  One highlight: “seeing vultures and lions mating.”

In the Letters section of the following issue a sharp-eyed reader asked:  “Will the results of this union look anything like the gryphon on the Cobb Hall archway near Botany Pond?”

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.

2008-01-20

Giving consumers a lively look at their local food sources. Thanks to Warren Clark of CCI Marketing for calling our attention to some innovative agricultural television programming in California.  It comes from an “Eye on the Bay” series hosted by Liam Mayclem of KPIX-TV, San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose.  You can view online the lively approach he and his associates used in their October 7 program about beekeeping, family dairy farming, olive ranching and organic egg production in that region.

Posted at http://cbs5.com/video/?id=40196@kpix.dayport.com . Use the site search system, entering this title: “Farms and Ranches”

“Chicken Soup” advertisement proves a winner. An agricultural advertisement known as “Chicken Soup” was the winner during October of national honors in the Creative Excellence in Business Advertising (CEBA) awards program.  This ad, created for Pfizer Animal Health by Martin Williams Advertising, Minneapolis, Minnesota, placed first in the category of single ads of one page or less in a program with an annual budget up to $100,000. It featured the headline: “If chicken soup did the trick, we wouldn’t be talking.”

The ad, which ran in selected farm periodicals, was part of a campaign that also earned radio honors earlier this year in the National Agri-Marketing Association “Best of NAMA” recognition program.

Title: Cowboy wisdom hits the airwaves

View the ad and campaign information online at http://www.martinwilliams.com/showcase/PfizerAH/

Will ICT only widen the digital divide? “Pessimists who claim ICT [information and communication technologies] will increase still further the divergence between rich and poor countries are misinformed,” according to a representative of the United Nations Capital Development Fund.  In a 2006 analysis that we added recently to the ACDC collection Adam Rogers, head of communications and public information for UNCDF, pointed to progress being made.

He also argued that these technologies are most effectively leveraged when:

• The focus is on poverty alleviation and not on ICT itself (the task, not the tool).
• ICT components are kept simple, relevant, practical and local.
• ICT practitioners are involved in the design of ICT strategies.
• There is significant community involvement.
• New solutions are built on what is already in place.
• There is a focus on training to ensure success and sustainability.
• There is a plan to replicate and scale up the project if it is successful.

Title: ICT will ultimately bridge the digital and poverty divides

Posted at http://www.uncdf.org

Seeing genetically modified crops through different lenses .  “Developing” and “developed” countries see GM crops through importantly different lenses, according to a meta-analysis of seven databases containing 43 studies about mass media coverage, public knowledge and attitudes toward GM crops.  Researchers Eric Abbott and Lulu Rodriguez also found complex differences among “developing” countries.  They offered three recommendations for agricultural communicators who are preparing messages for audiences in any country:

1. Beware of generalizations about GM crops across countries or continents.
2. Be cautious about embracing results of hypothetical studies asking consumers whether or not they would buy GM foods (either directly, or if they were priced more cheaply, or had a specific benefit or risk).
3. Strive to help mass media balance the dialogue about GM crops.

Title: Genetically modified crops in developing countries

For full-text access, contact lead author at eabbott@iastate.edu

The Farmer Field School approach helps Danish dairy farmers. The FFS approach to agricultural improvement involves a process in which farmers share and use their own knowledge and experience to solve problems they are encountering.  It is used widely in agricultural development programs.  And recently we added to the ACDC collection a case example in Farmers Weekly (UK) about how FFS helped Danish dairy producers reduce their use of antibiotics.

“Over a period of one year, four farmer groups, each consisting of approximately six farmers, set to task.  Each month, each group met on a different farm to discuss a particular problem that had been identified by the host farmer.  Through a process of discussion and examination of farm records, aided by the presence of a facilitator, the groups were successful in reducing antibiotic usage by approximately 50%, with no discernible negative impact on health and welfare and a tangible improvement in the farm environment.”

Title: Farmer Field School approach halves antibiotic use in dairy cattle

Posted at:

www.fwi.co.uk/Articles/2008/03/07/109270/farmer-field-school-approach-halves-antibiotic-use-in-dairy.html

Boosting knowledge and easing concerns about food irradiation. An Extension team in Texas used experiential learning techniques that increased knowledge levels and reduced negative perceptions among participants in a short course.  We added this report recently from a recent issue of the Journal of Extension .

Participants in the short course at Texas A&M University included food safety regulators, Extension educators, a food processor and port authority staff member.  Here are some of the experiential learning methods used:

• Presentations by experts
• Tours
• Group discussions
• Taste tests
• Radioactive exposure tests

Title: Increasing positive perceptions of food irradiation

Posted at http://www.joe.org/joe/2008august/rb3.shtml

Communicator activities approaching

Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam. That sentiment remains strong in the minds of many Americans, according to a recent national survey by the Wildlife Conservation Society.  Findings showed that:

• Less than 10 percent understood how many bison remain in the United States.
• More than 74 percent believe that bison are an extremely important living symbol of the American West.
• More than half view the bison as a symbol of America as a whole.

Posted at http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-11/wcs-nns111808.php

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.

2008-01-19

Helping close a black hole in communications for development. Sometimes, as we scout for information, we come across fresh insights about our mission in the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center. Here is an insight from two communications faculty members in Peru.  They were writing in the Communication for Social Change Report :

“We have found that there is an insurmountable void, a kind of black hole that the rationality of communicational diagnosis has actually prevented from closing:  the creative connection between research in the form of diagnosis and/or baselines, and the communication strategies derived from such research.”

We hope that, through this Center, we are helping strengthen connections between research and practice in the world of agriculture-related journalism and communications.

Title: Developing a unique proposal for communication for development in Latin America

Posted at http://www.communicationforsocialchange.org/mazi.php?id=6

Food safety more worrying than national security .  Results of a survey during May among 42,000 Korean adults revealed more concern about food safety than about war, nuclear risks and other national security issues.

• Worry about contaminated food and food poisoning topped the list of food safety concerns. “Public awareness of food safety has grown since the resumption of U.S. beef imports became a social issue…Given the melamine scare, however, Korean concern over food safety is expected to remain high.”
• Increasing dependence on food imports also ranked high.  Eighty-seven percent said they were worried about imported farm produce, compared with only 40 percent concerned over the safety of domestic farm produce.

Posted at http://english.donga.com/srv/service.php3?biid=2008101844698

How the “frankenfood” metaphor has been used on the Web. You can find an informative analysis of this metaphor in an article by Iina Hellsten in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. Hellsten followed the development of “frankenfood” over time (beginning in 1992), then mapped ways in which the term was used on various Web sites.

“The Frankenstein food metaphor is interesting because of its clear life-cycle on the Web,” the author concluded.  Also, it served different functions for different discourses:

• It was useful in evoking emotions that could be transformed into action against genetic manipulation in food production.
• For participants in the newsgroups it effectively gave a name to these concerns.
• In the newspaper, it provided a catchy and concise way of talking about the politicized issue.

Title: Focus on metaphors: the case of “Frankenfood” on the Web

Posted at http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol8/issue4/hellsten.html

Fish communicating – by glowing bright red .  Certain fish are capable of glowing red, according to research reported recently in BMC Ecology .  Nico Michiels, from the University of Tübingen, Germany, and associates identified at least 32 reef fish species that fluoresced visibly in red.

“We believe red fluorescence may be part of a private communication system in fish,” the authors speculate.

Title: Fantastic photographs of fluorescent fish

You can see a summary of the report, along with sample photos, at: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-09/bc-fpo091208.php

Much room for improvement in farm safety photography .  That’s the message from results of an analysis of safety-related photographs in three popular U.S. farm periodicals.  According to findings reported earlier this year in the Journal of Agricultural Safety and Health :

• Only 56.7 percent of the published photos illustrated best practices for safety.
• Among the photos that included children, only 18.5 percent depicted best practices.
• Photographs in advertisements illustrated best practices 56.5 percent of the time.

“Editors, photo-journalists, and advertisers should take every opportunity to promote safety in this high-risk industry through portrayal of safe work practices and safe work environments in photographs that are used in farm periodicals,” the authors concluded.

Abstract at http://www.unboundmedicine.com/medline/ebm/journal/J_Agric_Saf_Health

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

Honored rural columnist tells how she writes for metro audiences. Angela Goode of South Australia recently offered 27 years of tips and perspectives on her efforts to improve public understanding of agriculture. Based on a rural property, Angela has written a popular weekly column for The Advertiser newspaper, Adelaide. She was honored earlier this year as the inaugural Rural Icon by Rural Media South Australia.

You can read her report and some of her recent columns in a feature she provided to the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ).

Title: Reporting on agriculture in metropolitan media

Posted at http://www.ifaj.org

Communicator activities approaching

Another model headline for livestock editors .  We close this issue of ACDC News with another supposedly-actual headline that has been floating around the internet.  At least it touches on matters that livestock journalists might cover. Thanks to Burt Swanson for alerting us to it:

“Panda mating fails; veterinarian takes over”

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.

2008-01-18

Great laments in rural-urban relations .  That’s the title of a new analysis about why rural-urban dialogue often goes missing, or astray – and why reporters have a hard time understanding and contributing to it.  Writing for the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists, Owen Roberts (University of Guelph) and Jim Evans (University of Illinois) dug into four types of hurdles and roadblocks that reporters encounter:

• Technical and practical challenges (for example, rural-urban issues becoming more scientifically complex.)
• Values at stake (for example, bumping up against traditions, past experiences, environmental preferences and values in conflict.)
• Legal, political and regulatory challenges (for example, when no clear rules relate to an issue.)
• Hurdles in the world of independent commercial journalism (for example, news of the day overwhelming media attention to longer-term issues.)

You will find more than 35 hurdles and roadblocks identified in this second feature in the authors’ series on improving rural-urban coverage.  They welcome your help in adding to that list.

Title: Great laments in rural-urban relations

Posted at http://www.ifaj.org/news/urban_rural_relations.pdf

Author contacts:  Roberts at owen@uoguelph.ca and Evans at evansj@illinois.edu

Landmark report on agricultural knowledge, science and technology for development .  “The way the world grows its food will have to change radically to better serve the poor and hungry if the world is to cope with a growing population and climate change while avoiding social breakdown and environmental collapse.”

That overview introduced a major report, International assessment of agricultural knowledge, science and technology for development , released in April by the United Nations Environment Programme. More than 400 scientists, worldwide, prepared this massive study.  And communications was cited as a key ingredient to success.

“Investment directed toward securing the public interest in agricultural science, education and training and extension to farmers has decreased at a time when it is most needed,” the report stated.  It emphasized getting farmers (small and otherwise) engaged more actively and using their local knowledge.  You can learn more about the report at:

http://www.unep.org > Search on document title

http://www.leisa.info > Search on document title

No magic bullets for encouraging soil conservation. One might think there are certain keys to encouraging farmers to adopt practices that conserve soil.  Not so, according to findings reported in the journal, Food Policy .  Researchers Duncan Knowler and Ben Bradshaw analyzed some 130 studies conducted globally about farmers’ adoption of conservation agriculture.

“…the primary finding of the synthesis is that there are few if any universal variables that regularly explain the adoption of conservation agriculture across past analyses.”

Their best advice?  Tailor your conservation efforts to reflect the particular conditions of individual locales. That’s a call for the help of effective communicators.

Title: Adoption of conservation agriculture

“Farm groups are getting secretive,” observed John Greig, editor of Ontario Farmer (Canada), in an editorial last month.  He cited recent examples of meetings and conferences being closed to media by some commodity groups and the Ontario Federation of Agriculture.

“Agriculture decision-making in Ontario is moving underground at a rapid pace, and few people have noticed,” he said, adding that it is “a scary day for democracy when those elected by a constituency are afraid to tell those who elected them what they believe.”  He explained that when meetings are closed to the media farmers will not get the information they can use to help plan their businesses and figure out how rural society works in relation to their families and properties.

Title: Farm groups are getting secretive

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

Those rural community weeklies – a model for today’s “hyperlocal”media strategies . When Rob Curley helped create hyperlocal news coverage for the Washington Post he used a model based on his childhood memories of how local newspapers served his family in rural Kansas.

“The nature of local journalism has not changed significantly in many years,” Curley explained in a recent article in Nieman Reports . He suggested that some enduring guidelines cut across audiences, formats – even the use of new online media.

Posted at http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/07-4NRwinter/p53-curley.html

Welcome to a new student associate . The ACDC would like to welcome Chelsey Waltz as a new student associate to the Center. Chelsey grew up in the small farming community of LeRoy, Illnois. As a high school student, she took agriculture classes and participated in the FFA. She is now a sophomore in agricultural communications at the University of Illinois. She chose her major because reading and writing are her strong suits and she wanted to combine a communications degree with another subject she was interested in. During her time at the Center, Chelsey hopes to gain experience doing research and journalism related to agricultural communications.

Online news services.  Recent?  Wait a minute. They have been evolving for more than 160 years, according to an analysis by An Nguyen in First Monday , a peer-reviewed journal on the Internet.  This fascinating pre-Web evolution includes the telegraph, telephone, audiotext, teletext, videotext and other online venues.

Agricultural information services, internationally, have been an important part of this history.  You can identify hundreds of documents about agricultural uses of them by going to the ACDC search page and conducting “Subject” searches on those terms.

Article posted at http://firstmonday.org > Search on the title, “Interaction between technologies and society”

Communicator activities approaching

No, the lexophiles (lovers of words) aren’t finished yet .  Thanks to Donald Schwartz for restocking our collection of words at play.  Among the expressions, we look especially for those that touch on the themes of interest to ACDC – food, agriculture, communicating and decision making.  With due apologies, here we go again:

• She had a boyfriend with a wooden leg, but broke it off.
• Local Area Network in Australia: the LAN down under.
• Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis.

Whew.  Have you seen other examples of “words at play” for the ACDC collection?

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.

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                                                                                                Issue 08-17, October 2008

Great laments in rural-urban relations.  That’s the title of a new analysis about why rural-urban dialogue often goes missing, or astray – and why reporters have a hard time understanding and contributing to it.  Writing for the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists, Owen Roberts (University of Guelph) and Jim Evans (University of Illinois) dug into four types of hurdles and roadblocks that reporters encounter:

• Technical and practical challenges (for example, rural-urban issues becoming more scientifically complex.)
• Values at stake (for example, bumping up against traditions, past experiences, environmental preferences and values in conflict.)
• Legal, political and regulatory challenges (for example, when no clear rules relate to an issue.)
• Hurdles in the world of independent commercial journalism (for example, news of the day overwhelming media attention to longer-term issues.)

You will find more than 35 hurdles and roadblocks identified in this second feature in the authors’ series on improving rural-urban coverage.  They welcome your help in adding to that list.

Title:  Great laments in rural-urban relations

Posted at http://www.ifaj.org/news/urban_rural_relations.pdf

Author contacts:  Roberts at owen@uoguelph.ca and Evans at evansj@illinois.edu

Landmark report on agricultural knowledge, science and technology for development.  “The way the world grows its food will have to change radically to better serve the poor and hungry if the world is to cope with a growing population and climate change while avoiding social breakdown and environmental collapse.”

That overview introduced a major report, International assessment of agricultural knowledge, science and technology for development, released in April by the United Nations Environment Programme. More than 400 scientists, worldwide, prepared this massive study.  And communications was cited as a key ingredient to success.

“Investment directed toward securing the public interest in agricultural science, education and training and extension to farmers has decreased at a time when it is most needed,” the report stated.  It emphasized getting farmers (small and otherwise) engaged more actively and using their local knowledge.  You can learn more about the report at:

http://www.unep.org > Search on document title

http://www.leisa.info > Search on document title

No magic bullets for encouraging soil conservation.  One might think there are certain keys to encouraging farmers to adopt practices that conserve soil.  Not so, according to findings reported in the journal, Food Policy.  Researchers Duncan Knowler and Ben Bradshaw analyzed some 130 studies conducted globally about farmers’ adoption of conservation agriculture.

“…the primary finding of the synthesis is that there are few if any universal variables that regularly explain the adoption of conservation agriculture across past analyses.”

Their best advice?  Tailor your conservation efforts to reflect the particular conditions of individual locales. That’s a call for the help of effective communicators.

Title:  Adoption of conservation agriculture  

“Farm groups are getting secretive,” observed John Greig, editor of Ontario Farmer (Canada), in an editorial last month.  He cited recent examples of meetings and conferences being closed to media by some commodity groups and the Ontario Federation of Agriculture.

“Agriculture decision-making in Ontario is moving underground at a rapid pace, and few people have noticed,” he said, adding that it is “a scary day for democracy when those elected by a constituency are afraid to tell those who elected them what they believe.”  He explained that when meetings are closed to the media farmers will not get the information they can use to help plan their businesses and figure out how rural society works in relation to their families and properties.

Title:  Farm groups are getting secretive

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

Those rural community weeklies – a model for today’s “hyperlocal”media strategies. When Rob Curley helped create hyperlocal news coverage for the Washington Post he used a model based on his childhood memories of how local newspapers served his family in rural Kansas. 

“The nature of local journalism has not changed significantly in many years,” Curley explained in a recent article in Nieman Reports. He suggested that some enduring guidelines cut across audiences, formats – even the use of new online media.

Posted at http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/07-4NRwinter/p53-curley.html

Welcome to a new student associate. The ACDC would like to welcome Chelsey Waltz as a new student associate to the Center. Chelsey grew up in the small farming community of LeRoy, Illnois. As a high school student, she took agriculture classes and participated in the FFA. She is now a sophomore in agricultural communications at the University of Illinois. She chose her major because reading and writing are her strong suits and she wanted to combine a communications degree with another subject she was interested in. During her time at the Center, Chelsey hopes to gain experience doing research and journalism related to agricultural communications.

Online news services.  Recent?  Wait a minute.  They have been evolving for more than 160 years, according to an analysis by An Nguyen in First Monday, a peer-reviewed journal on the Internet.  This fascinating pre-Web evolution includes the telegraph, telephone, audiotext, teletext, videotext and other online venues.

Agricultural information services, internationally, have been an important part of this history.  You can identify hundreds of documents about agricultural uses of them by going to the ACDC search page and conducting “Subject” searches on those terms.

Article posted at http://firstmonday.org > Search on the title, “Interaction between technologies and society”

Communicator activities approaching

November 12-14, 2008

“Making waves, lifting tides.”  Annual conference of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting (NAFB) in Kansas City, Missouri USA.

Information: www.nafb.com

January 20-22, 2009

Knowledge “Share Fair” to showcase examples of good knowledge sharing practices in agricultural development and food security.  Hosted by five international agencies and held at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome, Italy.

Information: www.sharefair.net

No, the lexophiles (lovers of words) aren’t finished yet.  Thanks to Donald Schwartz for restocking our collection of words at play.  Among the expressions, we look especially for those that touch on the themes of interest to ACDC – food, agriculture, communicating and decision making.  With due apologies, here we go again:

• She had a boyfriend with a wooden leg, but broke it off.
• Local Area Network in Australia: the LAN down under.
• Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis.

Whew.  Have you seen other examples of “words at play” for the ACDC collection?

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.

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Bad news about readership of food nutrition labels. A new report we have added from the Economic Research Service of the U. S. Department of Agriculture paints a discouraging picture of label-reading during the past decade. Consumers reduced their readership of most label components between 1995-96 and 2005-06.  For example:

• Readership of the ingredient list dropped 11 percent.
• Readership about calories, fat, cholesterol and sodium dropped 10 percent.
• Only the use of information about fiber and sugars did not decline.

Planners say they need to review the standardized nutrition labeling that went into effect in 1994 – and review their information campaign approach.

Full 32-page report posted at http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err63

Adapting new information technologies to local languages .  A recent article by Don Osborn described an effort to help make information more accessible to people throughout Africa.  There are, by estimate, more than 2,000 African languages.  Discussions during 2004 led to a new Pan-African Localization (PAL) project. It began during 2005 to enhance the localization of technology in Africa, with particular emphasis on development and education.

Information technology is not the only complexity in this process, according to Osborn.  Part of the challenge is “overcoming an apparent mindset that adding a new African language capacity to computers somehow detracts from the existing one, usually English or French.”

Title: Localizing languages

Posted at http://ictupdate.cta.int/en/feature_articles/localizing_languages

How Vietnam consumers responded to early avian influenza outbreaks. In January, 2004, Vietnam became the first country to report H5N1 to the World Organization for Animal Health.  Researchers M. Figuié and T. Fournier examined the perceptions and reactions of Hanoi consumers during four outbreaks of 2004-2005.  Their findings, reported recently in Risk Analysis , revealed that consumers reacted quickly and intensely to stop eating poultry. However, they resumed again when the crisis abated.

“Perceived control of AI has been shown to determine the behavior of Vietnamese consumers with regard to poultry consumption,” the authors concluded.  They offered suggestions about implications for risk communication efforts.

Title: Avian influenza in Vietnam

Sheep may, indeed, never seem the same in the minds of those who have seen artist Jean Luc Cornec’s “telephone sheep.”  Thanks to Steve Shenton for alerting us to a creative art project that fits the interests of agricultural journalists and communicators.  The artist has created a flock of sheep made entirely of recycled telephones and curly phone cables. They have been displayed at the Federal Postal Museum and the Museum for Communications in Frankfurt Main, Germany.

Images are on various Web sites, but you can find a selection of photos of the flock at:

http://www.lifeinthefastlane.ca/3-incredible-artists-using-intriguing-techniques/art

Scroll to the third section that features these sheep.

Why extension agents hesitate to use a Web-based resource . Since 2006 county extension agents in the U. S. have had access to eXtension.  It is a repository of multimedia learning modules based on research conducted by land-grant universities.  We recently added to the ACDC collection the report of a survey by Amy Harder and James R. Lindner shedding light on barriers that may affect agents’ decisions to use this resource. Here are some of the potential barriers they see:

• Lack of time to learn about it, fit it into their job responsibilities and respond to online requests.
• Lack of incentives for using the resource and contributing to it.
• Financial concerns about buying and supporting needed technologies, promoting the resource locally and sharing revenue with multiple partnering institutions.
• Planning issues such as lack of opportunities to learn about the resource and lack of shared vision for the role of eXtension.
• Technology concerns, including loss of face-to-face contact with clientele, lack of technical support and training programs, and loss of local control of extension information.

Title: Perceived barriers to the adoption of a Web-based resource

For full-text access, contact the lead author at amharder@ufl.edu

Agricultural journalism:  Are they playing our tune again? A recent question from Masaru Yamada, agricultural journalist associate in Japan, has stirred our thinking about trends in journalism education. In the United States (and perhaps elsewhere) journalism education began with specialized journalism, such as agricultural, technical, home economics and engineering.  Then journalism education shifted to a philosophy that a good journalist can cover any subject.

Now, we see increasing need for journalists who understand the complexities of subjects they cover as well as the principles and skills of effective reporting. Why?  As various subject areas expand in size, internationalize and become more complex and fast-changing, we can expect to see more specialized journalists and communicators.  In fact, we already are seeing evidence.  Notice how many specialized journalist associations have formed around areas as diverse as health care, jazz, ethnic interests, religious interests, business, environment, snow sports, military, crime, HIV/AIDS and gender.

Your thoughts?  Examples?  Please pass them along to us at docctr@library.uiuc.edu

Communicator activities approaching

Great job of selling livestock .  We close this issue of ACDC News with a market report that agricultural columnist Lee Pitts described in a recent issue of Farm World .  It seems that an associate on his newspaper staff once transposed an auction market report in a way that resulted in the following sentence:

“We will continue to have sales semi-weakly throughout the summer.”

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.

2008-01-16