The Communication Scarcity in Agriculture

Today, the general public craves information on food and agriculture with an unprecedented passion. But the agricultural sector, unaccustomed to an interested and inquisitive society, has largely failed to respond to the public's demands for information. Instead, corporations, time-pressed journalists, bloggers, media celebrities, film-makers, authors and concerned consumers jumped in to fill the void. Food is emotional, and these players - some well-intentioned and others not - got a lot of traction playing off consumer fears of the unknown. This critical and timely book explains how changing demographics, cultural shifts, technological advances and agriculture's silence all combined to create the perfect storm - a great chasm between those who know, and those who don't know, agriculture. The ramifications of a poorly-informed consumer base are now becoming clear in our policy debates and consumer-driven business decisions. There is a lot of common ground between the agricultural sector and their consumer base, but each group largely fails to appreciate it, and the consequences of such a divide grow increasingly dire. Drawing on a wide-range of expertise, from leading agricultural researchers to major agribusiness leaders to consumer advocates, Eise and Hodde lay out exactly why communication is so urgently critical to our modern-day agricultural system. They outline the major themes affecting agricultural communication - perception, emotion, technology, science - and what we can do now to improve the debate and safeguard our future food supply for generations to come.This book is suitable for those who study agriculture, environmental economics and mass media and communication.

Jessica Eise is the Director of Communications in the Agricultural Economics Department at Purdue University, where she also teaches. She has a master's in Journalism and International Relations from New York University. Eise worked internationally in communications for five years before a stint in Washington, DC, in policy communications. Whitney Hodde is a Research Assistant in the Agricultural Economics Department at Purdue University. She has a master's in Agricultural Economics from Purdue University. She was raised on a farm in Iowa and worked in Washington, DC, for seven years as an environmental finance expert in the non-profit world.

Foreword: Dr. Robert Paarlberg Foreword: Dr. Sonny Ramaswamy Preface: Today's Communication Environment Introduction: The Scarcity of Communication Part One: The Reality Chapter One: Pink Slime: When a media frenzy strikes Chapter Two: Chipotle Marketing: Pushing polarization to the next level Chapter Three: All That Glitters: The power of non-expert influence Chapter Four: Triple for a Dozen: The rise and dominance of advocacy Chapter Five: Technical Difficulties: Grappling with the benefits and risks of GMOs Part Two: The Nuances Chapter Six: Emotions and Agriculture Pop-Out: Food and Health: A Consumer's Perspective Chapter Seven: Communicating the Essence of Agriculture Pop-Out: Kids, Cows and Grass: A Farmer Blogger's Perspective Chapter Eight: The Importance of Perception Pop-Out: For Better Communication, A Cultural Reorientation: A Policymaker's Perspective Chapter Nine: Turning Up the Volume on Science Pop-Out: The Cost of Not Spending: An Academic's Perspective Part Three: A Reorientation Chapter Ten: Working With, Not Against: The power of a diversity of perspectives Chapter Eleven: Settling into Common Ground: The future of food and agriculture