Purpose: Agricultural extension services in poor countries often identify opinion leaders based on criteria such as wealth and social status. We explore the effectiveness of this top-down approach by analysing the role of so-called model and nodal farmers in the diffusion of malt barley in a highland community in Ethiopia. Research approach: We…

The traditions of the National FFA Organization (FFA) are grounded in agrarianism. This ideology focuses on the ability of farming and nature to develop citizens and integrity within people. Agrarianism has been an important thread of American rhetoric since the founding of country. The ideology has morphed over the last two centuries as the…

This paper explores the role of various social ties in building trust and providing opportunities for information acquisition and knowledge exchange (IAKE). Social capital is used as a vehicle to explore the relationships between farmers and their advisors using bovine tuberculosis (bTB), a major disease facing the English cattle industry, as a…

Often organized as grassroots, nonprofit organizations, many farmers' markets serve as strategic venues linking producers and consumers of local food while fulfilling multiple social, economic, and environmental objectives. This article examines the potential of farmers' markets to play a catalyst role in linking local food systems to the social…

The importance of social capital as a resource for rural development, especially in the context of projects involving joint participation of state and civil society, is widely recognized today. This paper analyzes the obstacles confronted by local players--small farmers and government organizations--in the development of an irrigation area through…

Justifiably concerned about power dynamics between researchers and participants in participatory research, much of the literature proposes guidelines for including participant voices at every step of the research process. We find these guidelines insufficient for dealing with constraints set up by the social organizational structures in which…

In his presidential address Jess Gilbert examines two democratic experiments of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) during the New Deal: first, county planning that coordinated federal programs through citizen committees, and second, land redistribution to landless southern farmers, including a small number of black sharecroppers…

This paper reports on research into the learning aspects of adopting integrated parasite management practices for sheep (IPM-s) applying a workplace learning framework. An analysis of four primary data sources was conducted; a postal survey of Australian wool producers, a Delphi process with IPM-s researchers, focus groups and interviews with wool…

In contrast to those of other industrialized western European countries, France's agricultural community continued to represent the majority of the national population for a long time and only became one of many minority groups at the end of the twentieth century. It then came under the influence of various trends, sometimes conflicting but…

In this study, we explore the social basis of environmental concern, specifically focusing on attitudes about the agricultural environment in relation to an individual's geographic and social distance from agriculture. We also consider the significance of rural recreational behaviors in relation to agro-environmental concern. The analysis, based…

Pressure to adopt enhanced production technologies, changing government support policies, increasing and more diverse competition, and changing markets have posed economic challenges to North American farmers over the past two decades. As a response, farmers are adjusting their production model by incorporating agricultural related enterprises.…

Rural sociologists figure prominently in the move towards public sociology. The paper takes up Michael Burawoy's call for public sociology and discusses what rural sociologists have to offer to publics and how we stand to gain as a discipline in working with publics. The paper argues that rural sociologists' ability to adopt a cosmopolitan view…

This paper examines the influence of farmer knowledge upon decision making processes. Drawing upon the sociological debates around the ideas of reflexive modernity and biotechnology as well as from classic adoption and diffusion studies, I explore the influences upon farmers' use of "Bacillus thuringiensis" (Bt) corn. Utilizing survey data…

Even though both farmers' markets and community supported agriculture were first developed to provide markets for farmers, recently the goals of food security have been attached to these market-based alternative food institutions, based on their potential to be "win-win" economic solutions for both small-scale farmers and low-income consumers.…

Some actors in the ''mainstream'' agricultural sector are beginning to engage in strategies of influencing public perceptions of farming, responding to public anxieties over industrialised agriculture and to a supposed separation of non-farming publics from food production. This paper focuses on agricultural shows as sites and events central to…