Purpose: Participatory extension programmes are widely used to promote change in the agricultural sector, and an important question is how best to measure the effectiveness of such programmes after implementation. This study seeks to understand the current state of practice through a review of ex post evaluations of participatory extension…

As nanotechnology continues to advance in food and agriculture, there is the need for pragmatic decisions as to how to prepare the workforce. A comprehensive systematic evidence review (SER) and analysis of the literature to identify skill needs for the emerging agrifood nanotechnology sector and to determine how agricultural education can…

This study analyzes heterogeneous research with a focus on the knowledge, attitude, and behavior of farmers and the components of sustainable agriculture literacy through an interdisciplinary, systematic literature review for the time frame from 1996 to 2013. The major research databases were searched and 170 papers were identified. Paper…

Farmers' markets have emerged as one health strategy to improve the access and availability of fresh foods for limited-resource audiences using federal nutrition assistance programs, although their effectiveness on dietary intake is not well understood. The review reported here evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of existing research about…

Purpose: Agricultural advisory services are perceived by many actors involved in rural development as a key driver behind innovation processes in agriculture. However, changes in national and global contexts cause dramatic changes in the orientation of advisory services, their organisation and their methods of intervention. This article aims to…

Introduction: Sharing of information across cultural boundaries does not always live up to expectations. Information behaviour is an underlying factor, which can contribute to poor use or non-use of the information or information services at the disposal of indigenous people in a development context. Method: A literature study of information…

This article investigates several authors' philosophical accounts of farming, ranching, and rural U.S. life, examining varieties of agrarianism and reviewing topics in agricultural ethics that might be an appropriate focus for rural educators. It suggests discussion of controversial issues and emphasizes the importance of teaching the ironies of…

Certification within organic agriculture exhibits flexibility with respect to practices used to demonstrate that a product meets published quality standards. This case study of Mexican certified-organic agriculture finds two forms. Indigenous smallholders of southern Mexico undertake a low-input, process-oriented organic farming in which…

Survey evidence from three Central European Countries (Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland) is analysed to identify the degree of non-agricultural farm diversification and the factors facilitating or impeding it in individual and corporate farms. The effect of diversification on rural job creation and household incomes is investigated. The results…

Discussion of the information needs of agricultural researchers in Africa focuses on the potential usefulness of unpublished reports. Reasons for the underutilization of unpublished reports are addressed, including a lack of access resulting from poor bibliographic control, lack of an information policy in most countries, and inadequate and poorly…

The status of women viewed against the background of the United Nations Decade for Women is examined with emphasis on the world context, the Latin American context, and the context of rural women in the region. It describes attempts at categorization of rural women in Latin America based on the main types of agricultural economy in the region and…

A study provided a systematic review of employment demand studies in agriculture and agribusiness in the United States during the past 22 years and generated recommendations for the development of a consistent reporting format for use in future employment demand studies. Researchers examined 29 studies with respect to the following areas:…

The purpose of this paper is to identify the role of high technology in rural-to-urban and urban-to-rural movement and the implications of this technology for agriculture and rural areas. The first section of the paper considers the impact of technology on agriculture in the United States over the past 50 years. Because U.S. agriculture has…

The monograph is an attempt to describe conditions existing today in rural America that can affect the operation and impact of vocational education in rural areas and, thus, should exercise an influence on policy making. It identifies statistical patterns and characteristics common to rural areas, both within regions and those that cut across…

This paper reports progress on the development of improved measures of income and poverty by accounting for differences in living costs between regions, and on the tracing of relationships between natural resources and income; a reviewer's comments conclude the contents of this workshop collection. The overview describes how a measure of income…