Agricultural communication

Agricultural communication (or agricultural communications) is a field that focuses on communication about agriculture-related information among agricultural stakeholders and between agricultural and non-agricultural stakeholdedors. Agriculture is broadly defined in this discipline to include not only farming, but also food, fiber (e.g., cotton), animals, rural issues, and natural resources. Agricultural communication is done formally and informally by agricultural extension and is considered related to science communication. However, it has evolved into its own professional field.

By definition, agricultural communicators are science communicators that deal exclusively with the diverse, applied science and business that is agriculture. An agricultural communicator is "expected to bring with him or her a level of specialized knowledge in the agricultural field that typically is not required of the mass communicator". Agricultural communication also addresses all subject areas related to the complex enterprises of food, feed, fiber, renewable energy, natural resource management, rural development and others, locally to globally. Furthermore, it spans all participants, from scientists to consumers - and all stages of those enterprises, from agricultural research and production to processing, marketing, consumption, nutrition and health.

A growing market for agricultural journalists and broadcasters led to the establishment of agricultural journalism and agricultural communication academic disciplines.

The job market for agricultural communicators includes:

The academic field originated from communication courses that taught students in the agricultural sciences how to communicate. Originally, agricultural journalists were needed to report farm news for a much larger agricultural and rural audience. As people moved from the farm to cities and suburbs, a much greater proportion of the population had less direct knowledge and experience regarding agriculture. While a need still exists for agricultural journalists, an equal, if not greater need exists for agricultural communicators who can act as liaisons between an industry with deeply rooted traditions and values and a public with little to no understanding of how agriculture operates and why it is the way it is.

The key journal in the field is the Journal of Applied Communications. Researchers have focused on a variety of areas examining consumer attitudes toward agricultural products and practices including genetic engineering and genetically modified food, natural and organic food and production, and food-related risks. Another area of research has been media coverage of agriculture and agricultural issues. Topics have included media coverage of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (mad cow disease), YouTube videos of California Proposition 2 (2008), and television news coverage of food safety scares.

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