ACDC News

                                                                                    Issue 11-14

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can read the article here.

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

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

Communicator activities approaching.

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

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

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

You can read the poem here.

Best regards and good searching.

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