{"id":11436,"date":"2001-01-06T21:53:50","date_gmt":"2001-01-06T21:53:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/funkaces\/?p=11436"},"modified":"2018-03-06T22:07:05","modified_gmt":"2018-03-06T22:07:05","slug":"acdc-news-issue-01-01","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/funkaces\/acdc-news-issue-01-01\/","title":{"rendered":"ACDC News \u2013 Issue 01-01"},"content":{"rendered":"
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New<\/a>\u00a0Year\u2019s greetings from the ACDC staff<\/b>.<\/h3>\n

We wish you the best during 2001. The Agricultural Communications Documentation Center moves into this new year with an important and promising agenda. Effective communicating has never been more important than it is today in the broad field of agriculture, food, rural development and natural resources. And we are dedicated to helping communicators meet that challenge.<\/p>\n

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New food<\/a>\u00a0safety survey<\/b>.<\/h3>\n

Thanks to folks at CMF&Z Marketing Communications, Des Moines, Iowa, for providing a copy of the 2000 Food Safety Survey. This survey measures U.S. consumer attitudes and editor perceptions about a wide range of food safety issues, including irradiation, genetically modified organisms, organic foods, credibility of organizations within the food industry, and more. ACDC has a set of these annual survey reports for your reference, dating back to 1995.<\/p>\n

Reference: Use a title search (“Food Safety Survey”) for citations and document numbers.<\/p>\n

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The<\/a>\u00a0prospects for computers (as seen 35 years ago)<\/b>.<\/h3>\n

Recently we added to the ACDC collection an interesting 1966 article in the\u00a0American Scholar<\/i>\u00a0journal about the future role of computers. Author David B. Hertz suggested that computers can help address a “world communications crisis” in which technology has “totally outstripped” the management processes of institutions. He sketched this vision of computers in agriculture:<\/p>\n

“Agriculture is an excellent example of an area that could benefit greatly from applied computer techniques. There isn\u2019t enough food in the world. And the difference between the haves and have-nots \u2013 the people who are eating and the people who are starving \u2013 is very great. Yet it is certainly perfectly possible to feed the world. Instead of viewing it as a place in which each country is responsible for feeding its inhabitants, we could look at it as one unit from an agricultural point of view. The world then becomes simply many plots of ground in which differing techniques are used to produce a variety of agricultural products. Looking at the world as one unit, we can work with the computer to learn the most effective method of producing food on each of the various plots of ground and to determine the requirements of food for all the populations of the world\u2026”<\/p>\n

Reference: Use a title search (“Computers and the world communications crisis”) or author search (Hertz) for the full citation.<\/p>\n

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Presentations<\/a>\u00a0at “AgCom.com” conference<\/b>.<\/h3>\n

Today\u2019s cutting-edge uses of electronic technologies came under discussion during late October at the “AgCom.com” conference on the University of Illinois campus. The UI Agricultural and Environmental Communications Alumni Group sponsored this one-day program that featured eight presentation about the latest in agricultural communications technology. Following are some of those presentations available in the Center:<\/p>\n